


the sun don't shine anymore around here

by justlookthroughme



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes whump, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Espionage, Everybody Hurts, F/M, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mission Fic, On the Run, Sick Bucky Barnes, Tension, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 03:00:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 42,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30099294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlookthroughme/pseuds/justlookthroughme
Summary: Natasha's latest assignment started out as a mission to make everyone believe a ghost was dead.Because everyone knows that corpses never come back right.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 15
Kudos: 23





	1. Opening Scene

“Sam, what’s your status?” Steve asked, voice low.

“Things are set in motion. Waiting for the word. You?”

“Close. On standby.”

“Anyone asked for a selfie with you yet?” Sam teased. Steve always wore the worst undercover outfits.

“Har, har.”

“Gear?” Natasha checked. She tossed in more things she hoped they would never need – ipecac, epinephrine, antidotes.

“All set,” Steve responded.

“Wings are dysfunctional,” Sam said.

“Will that throw you off?” Natasha could hear the worry in Steve’s voice.

“Don’t need them till we’re ready to go.”

“Change of plans,” Maria buzzed in. “You’re clear to set out in a couple of hours.”

It would send the rest of the plan into disarray, but this was their only chance. “Got it,” Natasha replied, re-holstering her gun.

“You’re sure about this?” Steve asked.

“Everything’s done. Ready for extraction.”

Natasha placed a hand on her stomach to contain the flurry of nerves swirling inside. “Rendezvous in fifteen.”

“On my way,” Steve said. She could hear him pushing his chair back in over the sound of the crowd at the coffee shop. He never forgot his manners. “Thanks, Maria.”

“You might want to make it quick before someone else finds him,” Maria cautioned. “And Sam, stay close between 84th and 83rd. Someone will be dispatching your back-up wings.”

“Affirmative that,” Sam said gleefully.

“I know optimism is part of your charm, Steve.” Maria’s usual flat voice was soft. “But be prepared for the worst. Our missing person hasn’t moved in a while.”


	2. Wither

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We got him!” Steve reported into his earpiece. Natasha heard his relief and fear rolled into one jarring sob. “En route!”
> 
> “Come in, come in,” Sam buzzed back.
> 
> Meanwhile, in the back seat of SHIELD’s sedan, Bucky was growing cold in Natasha’s arms.

He was leaking; red blood and rusty steel. In the back of his mind, he knew that he should report damage, and return for maintenance.

But his mind was not what it used to be.

He could endure this until the life left his body, or he could crawl back to Hydra with his tail between his legs, just the way they made him.

He decided to die by his own hand, for once.

**

Natasha smelled the metallic tang of his blood, hear the labor of his breathing.

Steve raised his shield as defense; she raised her gun for offense.

Steve led the way, bunched muscles taut as bowstrings.

His reflexes must be impaired – he didn’t flinch until Steve and Natasha had gotten too close. Damaged and compromised, he tried to get his legs under him, like a newborn fawn learning to walk.

“Bucky,” Steve sighed. It was just a word, a name, but Natasha heard pain, desperation, and endless, endless longing. “Bucky, it’s me. It’s just – it’s just me.”

Bucky heaved himself up by digging his flesh fingers into the crevices of the brick-wall. He leaned heavily against it, trembling like a leaf. Natasha could see the glint of his metal hand clutching desperately at his blood-soaked shirt.

Behind his tousled hair, his cheekbones stood out razor-sharp like his cheeks were carved out.

What could they have possibly done to him this time that they hadn’t already?

“Don’t move, Buck. You’ve got more blood on the floor than you’ve got inside you.” Steve might be just a shell of a man worn out from hunting a ghost for months on end, but when he spoke, his authority rang loud and clear.

Yet, it all crumbled away on the word, “Please.”

Bucky turned his back on them – not perceiving them as a real threat, it seemed – and haggardly put one foot in front of the other.

“Buck, stay. Please. Stay,” Steve begged, sliding the shield into place behind his back. He didn’t seem to notice how tethered he was to Bucky – every step Bucky took, Steve followed, holding his hands out in case Bucky keeled over.

Regardless, Natasha kept her gun trained on him with a steady hand.

Bucky quickened his pathetic pace, leaving a steady trail of blood until he fell without warning onto his hands and knees with nothing more than a hushed groan. Steve moved on auto-pilot, like Bucky was his puppet master and he had just pulled Steve’s strings down with him.

Natasha stepped in between them, keeping Steve back. Bucky was a weakness for them both, but Natasha was stronger. She was trained by the best, even if that very trainer himself was now bleeding out by her feet.

And right now, it seemed like she had to be strong enough for all three of them.

Bucky crawled, panting shakily with the effort. His flesh arm trembled, leaving the metal one to propel his weight forward across the gravel.

Natasha wanted to spare him his dignity but it felt crueler to watch him go on like this.

Just as she was about to pull the trigger on the tranquilizer, the rest of Bucky’s muscles gave out and he fell flat onto his face, hitting his head on the asphalt.

She lowered her gun.

**

“We got him!” Steve reported into his earpiece. Natasha heard his relief and fear rolled into one jarring sob. “En route!”

“Come in, come in,” Sam buzzed back.

Meanwhile, in the back seat of SHIELD’s sedan, Bucky was growing cold in Natasha’s arms.

**

“We’re looking at two gunshot wounds. One clean through the thigh, one through the abdomen– puncturing the spleen. Fractured ribs. Malnutrition and severe dehydration.” The doctor put his clipboard away. “And, uh. Someone tried to cut him open. You were a few minutes away from seeing his intestines unspooling like a chain of sausages.”

Steve winced.

“What’s inside him?” Natasha asked.

“We don’t know yet. It’s already started to heal, so we’ll have to cut into him again.” The doctor looked tired. It was going to be a long night for them. “They’re working on him right now. We’ll let you know when the procedure’s over. You should be able to see him tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you,” Steve said, clapping him on the back.

The doctor nodded and walked away. For someone who spent a lot of time in hospitals, the smell of rubbing alcohol still burned Natasha’s nose.

“You should get some sleep,” Steve told her. “It’s been a long few weeks.”

Natasha glanced at the shut doors of the ER. “What about you?”

“Bucky’s spent enough nights in hospitals with me. About time I return the favor.”

Natasha rubbed Steve’s knuckles. “Call me if you need me.”

“I will.”

She bumped into Sam on her way out.

“How is he?” Sam asked.

“Muscles are still in knots. This isn’t like finding your long-lost Chihuahua.”

“I meant Bucky,” Sam clarified, full of concern for the stranger who ripped off his steering wheel and tore off his wing mid-air not too long ago.

“They’re doing their best,” Natasha said, through the tightness in her throat. It was easier to let her guard down around Sam. “But he’ll make it.”

“So, the hard part’s over, right?” Sam stretched out the crick in his neck. “All you gotta do is bang on his head a few times and its 1944 again in there?”

Natasha shrugged. “Worth a try.” But they both knew it was wishful thinking, at best. “I’m calling it a night.”

Sam nodded, stepping aside so she could pass through.

The thing was, that wasn’t the Bucky that Natasha wanted.


	3. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha grabbed his chin. “Look at me. I know you’re in there.”
> 
> “Sorry,” Bucky said gently, but firmly pushed her hand away. “No one’s home.”

“Stop calling me that.”

The warning note in his voice sent quiet shivers down Natasha’s spine.

Since Bucky had broken all the chairs during post-anesthesia breakdown, Steve knelt next to his hospital bed, stripped away from everything that made him stand tall and proud. “You’re Bucky Barnes,” he said, hand tight on the railing of the hospital bed.

“No.” Bucky’s voice caught.

“You’re Bucky,” Steve repeated. Anyone else would have sounded like a broken record. Steve just sounded broken.

Bucky flinched away, caving in on himself, eyes squeezed shut. Like Steve’s pain was latching onto him. His hands shook – both flesh and metal. They were cuffed to the railing with adamantium hydraulic clamps. An IV line was running into his flesh arm.

Steve soldiered on, the way Steve always did.

“It’s you,” he pleaded, like if he begged enough times it would make it true.

And it was. A few lifetimes ago. But Steve tended to forget that unlike him, not everything remained consistent with time.

“If you could just let us help you –“

“Steve,” Natasha interjected. “Please.”

“I’m not him,” Bucky rasped, like there wasn’t much of him left, not even his voice. “ _This_ is who I am. I don’t know what they made of me, but I know that I’m not that person you’re looking for.”

Steve made a strange sound, like he was trying to hold back a sob.

“He’s not inside me anymore,” Bucky said icily, like the coldness of the cryo had seeped into his bones. “You’re looking for him in the wrong place.”

Steve balled his fists, staring at Bucky’s skinned knees poking out from the stiff hospital blankets. “I’m not.”

As sudden as violence, Bucky jerked on the restraints holding him down. “I wish I was him. But I’m not,” he growled. Like an animal. “This is what they made of me and I don’t remember ever being anybody else,” he finished through gritted teeth and angry, welled-up tears.

Natasha was trained to _always keep her mask on_ but even she had to turn away.

“Please, Bucky…”

“Shut up!” Bucky roared, leaning right into Steve’s face. Steve stumbled back onto his heels, startled.

Propped up against the headboard, Bucky squeezed his eyes shut like he was trying to keep himself from exploding.

Steve looked like he was going to give Bucky a _fucking_ _hug_ so Natasha grabbed his wrist and all but dragged him out of Bucky’s hospital room.

“Nat –“

“You push him too hard, you push him away.”

“ _That_ is my _friend_ in there,” Steve insisted, a shaking finger pointing at the small panel glass on the door. “The body I _watched_ fall from the train. It is _that_ _body_ sitting in that room. And I – and I know it’s seventy years too late but I gotta find him.”

“I’d settle for whoever he is right now and work with what we have.”

“You didn’t know Bucky outside of history books and museums.”

“I did,” Natasha snapped. A version of him, at least. “I’m just as desperate as you are right now.”

It wasn’t like Steve to be so dismissive, but apparently pain changes a person. “He worked for them. He turned you into a weapon. And he tried to kill you. _Twice_.” He glowered at her. “What is it that you want from him, Nat?”

Natasha pressed her lips together.

Steve instinctively turned to glance at Bucky’s door, unable to withstand being separated from him again. “What?”

She turned away.

“Nat,” Steve said, voice and eyes tender, “look. I’m sorry. You’re just trying to help and I’m acting like an asshole.”

She shook her head. “That’s not it.”

“Then what is?”

“All those years together. With him.” Steve frowned in confusion. “You don’t think I’m stone cold through and through, do you?”

She kept her gaze on him, watching carefully as everything fell into place inside his head. His eyes started pleading for an explanation before his mouth even opened.

“Natasha.” Steve looked like the entire world had been ripped out from underneath his feet. “How long?”

Natasha felt her throat close up. “For almost as long as I was in the academy. And after.”

Steve just stared at her. “And this whole time,” he said, eyes dead but voice shaking with seeping anger, “you never said anything.”

It wasn’t a question, so Natasha didn’t answer.

“God.” Steve swept his tired face with his palm, but he looked even more tired than before.

“It’s nothing personal.” She glanced at Bucky’s door. “I always keep my secrets safe.”

**

The annoyance was evident on Sam’s face. “You guys keep cracking eggs and expect me to make perfect sunny side-ups with them when scrambled is the best I could do.” He crossed his arms. “If there’s even that much egg left.”

“Sam, I really don’t appreciate you comparing Bucky to a cracked egg,” Steve sighed. He didn’t look like Captain America right now. He hadn’t for a while.

He was just a man who was too tired to live but too proud to die. A brand he had established since 1918.

“What, then? Poached?”

Steve didn’t respond.

“Just leave me to do my job,” Sam said. “You’re too close to the situation.” Natasha was about to agree but Sam cut her off. “You _both_ are.”

Steve sighed again.

“And why did you never mention those _three_ _decades_ of your life?” Sam demanded.

“I wasn’t supposed to remember.” Natasha sat next to Steve. “And he didn’t remember me. It was easier to just…go along with it.”

“What else do we not know, Natasha?” Steve asked.

“There’s a lot that you don’t know but there’s nothing else that you _need_ to know,” Natasha retaliated. She was being defensive, but she had to. She had to keep them away.

“Look,” Sam said, always the peacemaker. “We need to be clear and transparent throughout this whole thing if we’re going to be working together as a team.”

Steve spoke, and when he did, it made Natasha’s blood boil. “How do I know I can trust you?” He wasn’t even looking at her.

“Fuck you,” she seethed.

“It’s not an unreasonable question, Nat,” Steve said softly. “I trust you with my life, you know that – but I’m not so sure anymore when it comes to this.”

“We’re on the same side here,” she said cuttingly.

“Yes, but what do you know that I don’t?”

“I told you.” Natasha had to fight to keep her voice from rising.

“Steve, man. Drop it,” Sam warned.

And Steve would have dropped it, but Natasha wasn’t done.

“You just can’t accept that this is bigger than you.”

“What I _can’t_ accept is feeling like I’ve lost yet another friend to secrets and hidden agendas.” Steve had that pinched look on his face that meant he was going to cry. “You know how much Bucky means to me.”

“He’s not Bucky,” Natasha cried in exasperation.

Steve turned to Sam. “What about you?”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “What _about_ me?”

“You’re still you?”

Natasha felt kicked in the gut. It hurt more than _actually_ getting kicked in the gut.

“Man, come on, of course I am. You’re just…you’re being a little paranoid here, Cap,” Sam said softly. He gestured between the three of them. “Nothing’s changed here.”

Steve’s shoulders were dropping, his posture looking like he was going to bend before breaking. “Everything’s changed,” he mumbled to the floor. He walked out.

Sam turned to Natasha. “He’s just having a rough time,” he said, employing his Therapist Tone. “All he has from his past life is Bucky, who’s become someone else. It’s like his world is falling apart again.”

Sam was pretty damn good at his job and Natasha felt sorry for Steve. She really did. But all she said was, “Life happens.”

**

The Asset hated it, being passed around from one handler to another. He was adaptive, but even he got tired sometimes.

**

“Knock, knock.”

Bucky was leaning against the mirrored-wall, head tilted upwards, staring blankly into the ceiling light. “Please leave.”

Natasha was great at taking orders, but she was also just as efficient at disregarding them. She invited herself in, and noticed his untouched plate. “Food here not good enough for you?”

Bucky took a breath so deep Natasha thought she could hear his ribs click.

“Are you still hurting?”

The corners of Bucky’s lips curved upwards in an ironic sneer, still staring straight into the blinding light overhead. “Interesting question.” The light made his pale skin almost translucent, highlighting the dark circles under his eyes. It made his blue irises glow. He looked maniacal.

Natasha pulled up the hem of his shirt. His skin had sealed itself back together nicely. They had had him transferred to a one-way mirrored cell once he was fully recovered.

“I assume your spleen is functional again,” she muttered. She let his shirt drop. He didn’t react. She didn’t think he even blinked. “What were you doing in the alley?”

“Taking a midnight stroll.”

“What, on your hands and knees?”

Bucky didn’t react to that, either.

“How’d you escape them?”

“I didn’t,” Bucky said quietly.

“Then they’re looking for you.”

Bucky interlaced his mismatched hands without shifting his eyes.

“I need you to talk.”

“I don’t know.”

“What did they put inside you?"

Bucky sighed, and swallowed tiredly. “Doesn’t matter.”

Natasha shifted her weight onto the other hip. “Am I supposed to believe that they cut you open like that just for the fun of it?”

Bucky snickered, pupils shriveling down into pinpoints in the light. “Then you don’t know Hydra.”

Natasha felt sick.

“I got rid of it,” Bucky said dismissively, now that he was done pulling her leg.

“What was it?”

“A tracking device.”

Natasha uncrossed her arms. The seconds bled into one another. “James,” she said, testing the waters.

He glanced at her. Another second ticked by. Looking back into the light, Bucky mumbled, “I don’t have a name.”

“You weren’t born the Asset,” Natasha said coldly, masking how overwhelmed she was to feel her heart sinking.

Bucky looked like he had checked out of his own body.

Natasha turned on her heels and headed for the door. “I’ll get them to send you hotdogs or something...”

“I don’t remember liking hotdogs, if that’s what you’re really asking,” he drawled.

But he did. And it was.

She turned to look at him.

He had pulled his eyes away from the blinding light, pupils dilating and head scratching against the one-way mirror glass. Then his eyes slipped shut.

“I’m not who you think I am,” he rasped, like he was talking in his sleep.

“You don’t have to be. Not right now.”

Bucky cracked open his tired eyes and fixed his steel-blues gaze back on her. “What do you want then?”

Deep inside her soul somewhere, something inside her started to cry. “You’ve already given me everything.”

He didn’t even blink, or move. “I’m too tired for this.”

Natasha pulled up the hem of her shirt. Her scar was puckered and ugly.

He stared at it, expression blank. “What could have possibly outweighed that?”

“I’m still here,” she told him, like a promise. “Doesn’t that prove something?”

“But he is not.” The frustration warped his voice into something black.

“You are.” Her voice shook.

He looked away from her, scrubbing at his eyes angrily. “ _God.”_ He made it sound like a curse. “It’s not that simple. How could you make it that simple?” he demanded in anguish. “You don’t know where I’ve been and what I’ve done.”

“I don’t care.”

“Simple as that.” His voice was dripping with sarcasm. “You, are not.”

“I take that as a compliment.”

“Why does he mean so much to you? Who was he?”

“A friend. Someone I could trust on the same side.”

He seemed to think about it. Probably imagining what she was saying, picturing her alongside him as they fought battles in tales of espionage. “I don’t think that’s enough,” he said slowly.

“For people who do what we do, an ally is great to have.” Natasha wondered what he would be able to hear if she ripped out her own heart and held it to his ear. “But a friend who is on your side only for you? That’s more than we can hope for.”

Bucky blinked slowly, like he was falling asleep. “Anyone would be damned to want more,” he said lazily.

“Maybe...” She felt suffocated. “Maybe that’s why we’re here.”

Bucky looked up at her through heavy lids.

“Love is for children.” She felt oddly removed from the entire situation, like her mind refused to accept that she found him. She had finally found him.

Probably because she didn’t. Not really.

“But we didn’t listen,” she finished.

The second his mask of apathy began to crack, he lowered his gaze to the floor.

Natasha grabbed his chin. “Look at me. I know you’re in there.”

“Sorry," Bucky said gently, but firmly pushed her hand away. “No one’s home.”

**

That night, Bucky started vomiting blood.

Natasha blew into the cell, where Bucky was lying on the floor with Sam at his side. His face was obscured by his hair, sticking with sweat. Blood was dribbling out of his half-opened mouth as he retched half-consciously.

“He’s burning. Where’s Steve?” Sam reported, gently stroking Bucky’s hair out of his face, although he was the one with the least connection to Bucky.

Bucky heaved and a fountain of blood spouted between his lips. His body curled in on himself with the effort.

“It’s a warning,” Natasha said. She helped Sam get Bucky to sit up.

A stream of blood splashed down his front.

“What warning?” Sam asked over the sound of Bucky retching.

Two women and one man came barging in with various medical instruments. She caught sight of Steve, who stood staring at them through the one-way mirror.

Bucky was reduced to a limp, shaking body, panting from the exertion.

Natasha held his hand. “That Hydra doesn’t share.”


	4. Hollow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You had this planned from the beginning,” Steve accused her.
> 
> “If I did, I would have gone after him alone.” Her voice trembled with anger. “I could have given you false intel, distracted you with red-herrings. You know I’m capable of that.”
> 
> Steve’s face was blank. “That, I know.”

He came to with a pounding headache. His lids felt heavy and his throat felt too big for his airway, suffocating him.

They were luring him home.

**

Bucky panted into the oxygen mask they had strapped onto his sickly pale face. He was shivering under the covers. His eyes slit open, unfocused, before rolling back inside head.

“Sleep, James,” Natasha whispered, gently stroking his matted hair, although she knew he had passed out again.

Steve laid another blanked on top of him.

“They’re starting to ask questions,” Sam said, entering the room.

“I’ll double their pay,” Steve responded.

“Money doesn’t erase _suspicion_.”

“No, but it keeps mouths shut.”

“They’re starting to worry about what they’re getting themselves into. They think they’re putting themselves at risk keeping him alive.”

“It’s the Winter Soldier. They knew there would be risks.”

“Yes but now they’re also working against someone who obviously wants him dead.”

“So we find other doctors,” Steve snapped.

Sam raised his palms in defeat.

“Then what do you suggest we do?” Steve barked.

Sam stared at him. “Why do you have to be so angry?”

“I’m splitting right down the middle here!” Steve barked. He curved his body inwards, rubbing a hand over his face. Bucky didn’t even stir. “I’m sorry. Sam. I’m sorry.”

Sam sat down on a chair farthest from where Steve and Natasha were converging around Bucky’s bed, like he was removing himself from all… _this_.

He had the least connection to Bucky.

“I’m taking him,” Natasha said.

“Where?” Steve sighed, like he was already expecting this to turn into a fight.

“He’s here with us, but Hydra still calls the shots. They’re releasing poison into his bloodstream as we speak.”

Sam looked guilty. “We don’t have the tech to remove the arm –“

“I’m not asking you to remove the arm because I know it can’t be done,” Natasha whipped. “He needs an antidote, and then he needs to disappear.”

Steve clenched his jaw. “You know I can’t go through that again.”

Natasha eyed him carefully. “I never pegged you to be the selfish type.”

The blow hit Steve exactly the way Natasha intended.

He took a moment to recover. “They’ll just keep releasing more poison from the arm.”

“The antidote works like a vaccine, too.” Natasha sighed. “Don’t look at me like that, Steve. Ross is going to haul our asses out soon enough, anyway.”

“What are you going to do?”

Natasha wiped a stray bead of sweat rolling down Bucky’s temple with her thumb. “I can’t say.”

She heard Steve snort through his nose. “You already have a plan mapped out? Of course you have.”

“Let’s just hear her out,” Sam said, always quick to play the mediator.

“I can’t,” Natasha repeated, looking at the two men. “Eyes and ears everywhere. You know how this works.”

Sam ran a hand through his shorn, dark hair, but said nothing. Steve looked like he was trying hard not to blow a hole through the flimsy wall of Bucky’s ward.

“You had this planned from the beginning,” he accused her.

“If I did, I would have gone after him alone.” Her voice trembled with anger. “I could have given you false intel, distracted you with red-herrings. You know I’m capable of that.”

Steve’s face was blank. “That, I know.”

Natasha’s hands started trembling next. “I’m not the enemy, Steve,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Then don’t act like one.”

“ _Enough_ ,” Sam hissed. “You do what you gotta do, Nat,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything else here.”

Steve looked at Sam like he had betrayed him. Sam pretended not to notice.

Natasha got up, leaving Bucky’s side. “Say your goodbyes, Steve.”

She pushed past him and headed straight to the washroom. She turned the faucet on full-blast, her tears dripping into the rush of water. She gripped the edge of the sink as she stared at herself in the mirror.

Bucky’s blood was on her face.

Sam was reflected, coming up behind her.

“Hey,” he said softly.

“He. He hates me. He fucking hates me.”

Sam pulled her into a warm hug; tight but gentle. “It’s okay. I got you. I got you.”

“He hates me,” Natasha repeated into Sam’s shoulder, voice muffled and face hot with tears.

“He’s spiraling,” Sam said. “He’s not thinking straight.”

Natasha couldn’t seem to stop sobbing.

Sam held her at arm’s length. “Listen. I’ll have Bucky’s medications ready. You can take the car.”

Natasha wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Thank you, Sam.”

Sam kissed her red hair at the top of her head. “We do what we gotta to do.”

**

Natasha swept Bucky’s bottles of painkillers, penicillin, vitamins, mood stabilizers, sleeping pills and hypodermic needles with a whole set of vials into a small black leather pouch.

“Natasha, please, don’t do this,” Steve begged.

“I’m the _only_ one who can do this.” She randomly grabbed the sets of clothes they bought for Bucky and stashed them into a duffel bag. His toiletry bag came next and, after half-a-second thought, his knife.

“Can we meet somewhere? I won’t follow you the whole way but maybe we could agree on a meeting point. When it’s safe.”

Natasha looked around for anything else she missed. Bucky didn’t have much.

“It’s never safe.” She zipped up the bag and hiked it over her shoulder.

“I cannot lose him again.”

“If you don’t let me do this, we both will.”

Steve looked utterly helpless. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly. “You’re not taking him back to Hydra, are you?”

Natasha was too numb at this point to feel hurt again. “You can’t seem to stop offending me.”

“Then how are you planning to save him?”

She tried to move past him but he stepped in her way. “I’ll get in touch with you in a few hours.”

“Is this dangerous?”

“Everything is dangerous, Steve.”

Steve held her gaze. “Will either of you be back?”

Natasha softened her voice. “I don’t know.”

Sam called from the door. “He’s not looking too good.”

Steve stepped aside, avoiding Natasha’s eyes.

Natasha marched back into Bucky’s ward. He had fallen asleep again, propped up on the pillows. He was breathing fine on his own, but not without effort.

She let the bags drop onto the floor and knelt down by his bedside. “James, wake up,” she whispered, fingers ghosting his cheek. His face was pale but his cheeks and lips were flushed from the fever.

Bucky peered at her through half-lidded eyes. “Water,” he croaked.

Sam gently guided a glass to his lips. Bucky gulped down desperately. “Slowly,” Sam cautioned.

Sam took the glass away when he was done. Natasha waited until Bucky’s chest stopped heaving and he had gotten his breath back.

“Come on. We have to go. Up.”

“Where?” His eyes were sliding shut again.

Natasha pulled the covers off of him while Sam helped him sit up. Bucky’s head lolled weakly along. Then his eyes widened. Sam snatched the basin from the bedside table and held it under Bucky’s chin just in time.

Blood spattered on Sam’s clothes.

Bucky looked close to passing out, lips tainted with blood. His jaw slacked open, neck muscles straining, wracked body heaving, and a thin stream of blood dribbled soundlessly from his chin. He weakly pushed the basin away.

“Sam. Get the bags,” Steve said, finally taking over. “Nat, start the car.”

Neither Sam nor Nat wasted time mulling over Steve’s change of mind. Sam tossed the keys to Natasha and grabbed the bags in one fluid motion, while Steve collected Bucky in his arms and easily lifted what was left of his body weight. Bucky was too weak to protest. He let his head fall back, neck bared, feet dangling as Steve carried him out of the medical wing of SHIELD facility.

The engine rumbled to life, drowning out the sound of Sam slamming the trunk shut. Steve gently laid Bucky along the length of the backseat. Natasha caught Steve’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

He shut the backseat door and walked around to the driver’s side. “Be safe,” he said softly.

“Always.” Natasha mustered a smile.

“I’m sorry. About the things I said.”

“Steve.”

When it was apparent that that was the end of their conversation, Sam stepped in. Natasha hugged him through the window.

“You come back, alright? The both of you,” he said.

Natasha squeezed his arm.

Steve was staring at Bucky, who was asleep.

Natasha hit the gas and watched as Steve and Sam got smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.

**

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

Natasha gently eased her foot on the brakes at every bump, so Bucky wouldn’t jostle awake. He had been asleep for hours now.

The person on the other end of the line was silent for a moment.

“Are you there?” Natasha urged.

“It’s really you,” the voice said.

The light turned green. She hit the gas.

“I never lie, Alexei.”

More silence. Natasha held her breath.

“It’s been years. I thought you were dead.”

She switched lanes. “I should be.”

“I thought this was your ghost. Calling me.”

She glanced at Bucky in the rearview mirror. “There are plenty of ghosts to go around.”

“Where have you been, Natalia?”

Bucky groaned from the backseat.

“I didn’t call you up for small talk.”

Bucky started coughing, like a he was hacking up a lung. Natasha pulled over to the side of the road.

“Who is that?”

She twisted in her seat to rub circles into Bucky’s back with her other hand as he coughed into the upholstery. He remained horizontal, just as Steve had left him, surrounded by pillows and cushions.

She wondered if he was even fully conscious until his hands started scrabbling at the door handle. For a second she thought he was going to make a run for it – despite his condition – but as soon as the door popped open, he stuck his head out and vomited red onto the asphalt.

“I have a friend, and he’s very sick,” Natasha said into the phone. She climbed out of the car. “We need your help.”

Alexei remained silent. Natasha pushed Bucky’s hair out of his face as he gagged, strings of bloody bile hanging from his lips.

“Alexei, I have never asked you for anything before.”

“You left me without a word, for _years,_ and you come back just because you want something from me?”

Maybe Steve did have a point. She was poison.

“You sold me out.”

Bucky’s chest was heaving, eyes barely open. He crawled backwards the rest of the way back inside the car, and heavily put his head back down onto a pillow. Natasha shut the door and leaned against it. A motorcycle zoomed past her.

“I had no choice. You have to understand.”

“I did. I do. And then I made my own choice too.”

“But I would _never_ let you go on thinking I was _dead_ –“

“It was for the best.” Natasha peered at Bucky, who wasn’t moving. “Now I need your help, and I need it now.”

“And then I never see you again?”

She considered this. “If that’s what you want.”

“You know that’s not what I want.”

She pressed her fingers into her temples. “Alexei.”

“How could you be so cold?”

She wasn’t cold. She _compartmentalized_. Most people didn’t understand that.

“It’s him, isn’t it? You found him again.”

Natasha pushed her hair back from her face. “Please. Just this once. We’ll call it even and I’ll go back to being dead.”

There was silence as Alexei considered it.

“Him, too,” Natasha promised.

“Fine,” Alexei said. “The spider always gets what the spider wants, huh?”


	5. Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky started crying.
> 
> “James? Hey, stay with me. Stay with me. You’re okay, you’re okay.”
> 
> “Hurts,” he gasped, his quivering turning into convulsions. He choked and spat out a glob of bright red phlegm.
> 
> Natasha pressed the heels of her palms into her temples, willing herself to stay sane.
> 
> “Kill me,” Bucky slurred through gritted teeth. Under his heavy lids, his blue, blue eyes pierced right through her. “Please,” he begged.

The sun was starting to dip below the horizon.

“Who were you talking to?”

Natasha glanced at Bucky through the rearview mirror. “You heard that?”

“I’m dying. Not deaf.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

Bucky sighed. He still hadn’t moved since he spewed his guts out onto the roadside. Even his eyes were still closed. “Poison. They warned me about this.”

“You’d think they would have changed their tricks by now.”

Bucky’s eyes opened blearily. “What do you mean?”

Natasha stared ahead at the road. “This isn’t the first time you got away from them.”

Bucky stayed silent.

“There are pillows. Make yourself comfortable. It’s a long drive.”

“Where are we going?” His voice was fading.

Natasha glanced back up at the mirror to check on him. He was falling unconscious again. “To see an old friend.”

Bucky didn’t respond.

She turned a corner. “ _Our_ old friend.”

**

The Asset felt a warm hand on his forehead, stroking his hair gently. He remembered, vaguely, when he would have found this comforting.

“Hold on till I get back,” she whispered.

It felt like he had been holding on forever.

**

The battery and ignition cable twisted together, she drove back to where she had left Bucky in the previous car by a deserted alley, and parked next to it.

She opened the door and peered inside. Bucky was sitting up now. His damp hair stuck limply to his face and neck, but he had stopped sweating. His fever seemed to have also gone down when she checked on him before she left.

“Come on,” she said, pulling out the pillows, “you can go back to sleep in that one.”

Bucky climbed out woozily, holding onto the door frame. He watched as Natasha transferred the pillows. “I thought you guys were supposed to be the good guys.”

Natasha returned to get the luggage from the trunk. “We’ll track down the owner and Steve will compensate them for it.” She dumped the luggage onto the floor and slammed the trunk shut. “Double.”

Bucky lifted the luggage before Natasha could beat him to it. The hot-wired car was still running so she slid into the driver’s seat while he tossed them into the trunk.

Then he slid into the passenger’s seat.

“Go lay down,” she told him.

“No,” he told her simply, head lolled over the headrest like it was too heavy for his neck to hold up. He swallowed painfully.

“Suit yourself,” Natasha muttered. She drove onto the main road. “You hungry?”

“No,” Bucky repeated, voice clipped. Natasha glanced at him. He didn’t look like he would be able to keep anything down anyway.

“Music?” Natasha connected her phone to the stereo without waiting for his answer. She wasn’t really worried about leaving menial evidences – Hydra always went for the big guns. Fly Me to the Moon wafted out from the speakers.

“You’ve got an old soul,” Bucky muttered.

Natasha kept driving.

“Where are you taking me?”

She stared pointedly at the road ahead. It was dark, save for the headlights. “Someone who can help you get better.”

“Why?”

She glanced at him. He was starting to look sickly pale again. “You want to wait until your brain starts leaking out your nose?”

Bucky didn’t react. He looked in pain enough as it was, breathing too slowly.

Natasha unzipped her shoulder bag one-handedly and tossed a black leather pouch onto his lap. “Take whatever you need.”

He didn’t answer. She took another quick glance at him. His eyes were struggling to stay open.

“I said take it.”

“Why are you helping me?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper, like he was too tired to breathe in enough air to speak.

“You know why.” Her voice came out defensive.

“I don’t.”

“You trust me. You’re in the car with me. Why?”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t what?”

“I don’t trust you.”

Natasha pretended it didn’t bite. “Just take the pills, goddammit.”

She heard the muffled clattering of pills and soft “pop” noises as Bucky opened the bottles. He swallowed them dry. She took her eyes off the road to catch a quick look at him and saw blood trickling out of one nostril. “Told you.”

Bucky tipped his head back, like the blood would go back inside his head.

Frank Sinatra accompanied their quiet journey. Natasha heard it in James’ voice, when they used to dance to it when everyone else was either asleep or dead.

“I never asked,” she said. “How would you prefer to be addressed?”

Bucky’s voice was a garbled whisper, but she heard it all the same. “James is fine.”

_You are all I long for. All I worship and adore._

**

“Alexei!” Natasha screamed, banging on the door. The house was dilapidated but the door was made of pure steel.

She rushed back into the car. Bucky was trembling from head to toe but he was out cold next to her in the passenger seat, blood dripping off of his chin and jaw. Natasha held her wrist against his nose, but both her sleeves were soaked through with blood. She palmed the car horn for the longest time.

Bucky started crying.

“James? Hey, stay with me. Stay with me. You’re okay, you’re okay.”

“Hurts,” he gasped, his quivering turning into convulsions. He choked and spat out a glob of bright red phlegm.

Natasha pressed the heels of her palms into her temples, willing herself to stay sane.

“Kill me,” Bucky slurred through gritted teeth. Under his heavy lids, his blue, blue eyes pierced right through her. “Please,” he begged, as he writhed and twisted against the seatbelt.

Natasha tore through the leather pouch for painkillers. His words were getting muddled and incoherent, his body jerking like someone was doing something to him that she couldn’t see.

She pressed her thumb and forefinger on either sides of his clenched jaw until his mouth fell open. “Come on, you’re okay,” she encouraged him, shoving two painkillers as far back on his tongue as she could. She didn’t know if he was awake or not, but he managed to swallowed them.

“ALEXEI,” she yelled out the rolled window, using every inch of lung capacity she had.

The door opened slowly, too slowly for her liking and Bucky’s urgency. Alexei peered out cautiously.

She wasted no time running over to Bucky’s side of the car and hauling his limp, shaking body out of the seat. “Help him. _Please_.” Bucky hung awkwardly in her arms, her grip on him slipping. His breaths were whistling down his windpipe.

“What were you _thinking_ bringing him here?” Alexei snapped. He ran to them anyway but kept his distance, like Bucky and Natasha carried the plague. “He’s not our property. He’s _theirs_.”

“We can’t let him die.” Natasha’s body gave out under Bucky’s weight and she went down on her knees onto the ground. The bottom half of Bucky’s body was still in the car.

“Then take him back,” Alexei hissed. Natasha hadn’t seen him in years, and it was harder to recognize with him when his features were so twisted from festered wrath.

Bucky’s body lurched and a stream of blood escaped from the corner of his lips. Something like sympathy crossed Alexei’s face, despite his rage.

“If I could make myself do that, I would have,” Natasha growled.

“Then he dies.”

“ _Alexei_ ,” Natasha begged. “Please.”

Alexei hesitated, looking at how tightly Natasha had her arms around Bucky’s heaving chest, despite how lifeless he looked. He tossed one final glare of pure resentment at Natasha before grabbing Bucky’s ankles from the car.

Natasha struggled to hold up Bucky’s upper body, especially when his metal arm alone weighed so much, but couldn’t keep up. She held his wrists uselessly as Alexei dragged him all the way into the house. She shut the door as soon as they were safe inside.

Alexei dropped Bucky’s legs like they were sacks of potatoes. “You’ve really got some nerve showing up like this. At _my_ _house_. With _him_.” He turned around and started raiding his own kitchen.

Natasha dropped back onto her knees, sweeping away Bucky’s hair from his face and rolling him onto his side so he wouldn’t drown in his own blood vomit. She stroked his cheekbone and tucked his hair gently behind his ear. Even unconscious, his brows were knitted in agony and sweat dotted his forehead.

Alexei came trudging back brandishing a syringe.

“Give me,” she said, taking it away from him.

“If I wanted to kill your precious soldier,” Alexei said, “I would have simply waited a few more minutes before opening the door.”

Natasha cleared Bucky’s hair off of his neck, and stabbed in the needle. She pushed the plunger.

Eyes still shut, Bucky heaved a huge gasp of air, his body finally able to compensate for the loss of oxygen.

“I don’t have many more of those. Just in case, you know, you plan on coming back the next time this happens.”

Natasha ignored his sarcasm. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

Alexei’s eyes were fixed on Natasha’s hand intertwined with Bucky’s. She didn’t even realize. It was a reflex.

His flesh hand was cold and trembling in hers.

Alexei got up and discarded the needle in a metal trash can. He leaned against the dusty kitchen counter, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Natasha pulled a towel Alexei had laid over the radiator to dry and draped it over Bucky without asking for permission. “Cozy place you got here.”

“Just for another week or two.” Alexei crossed his arms over his chest but it wasn’t to assert dominance. Instead, he seemed to just want to make himself smaller.

Natasha looked around for cushions or pillows, but he didn’t even have a couch. She wondered if he just slept on the floor. “I asked you to join us.”

Alexei snorted. “And work for SHIELD? I knew Hydra would come rearing its head – _heads_ – again soon.”

“Pierce is dead.”

Alexei pointed his chin in Bucky’s direction. “Doesn’t look over to me.”

Natasha watched Bucky breathe. “What you said. Cut off one head, twelve grow in its place.”

Alexei bowed his head, not looking at her. “I didn’t say twelve. I said two.”

“Semantics.”

“Anyway, I prefer living on the run.”

Natasha got to her feet and stood opposite Alexei, leaning against the cracked concrete wall.

“There’s more to life than running.”

“A bit rich coming from you, don’t you think?”

They said nothing for a while, neither one looking at the other.

“You never learn, do you?” Alexei said to the floor. “You just can’t leave him well enough alone.”

Natasha didn’t think she needed to waste her energy responding to him when he already knew the answer. She pushed off of the wall and walked back to Bucky. “You won’t see either of us ever again.”

She removed the towel off of him, balled it and threw it clumsily back onto the radiator.

“You choose him over me,” Alexei said behind her. Natasha ignored him and grabbed onto Bucky’s sweater. She dragged him to the door. “Every single time.”

Bucky’s eyes opened sluggishly, unseeing. Having kicked the door wide open, she continued dragging him back to the car, struggling. His sweater ripped along the way.

“Up,” Natasha commanded, panting. Bucky seemed unable to move. He laid there, staring up at the sky. She started pulling on his hands, and then on his clothes again. He locked his knees when he was finally upright and she helped him stumble into the car. He collapsed into the backseat.

“Does he even know who I am?” Alexei asked as Natasha shut the door. He stood an equal distance between the car and the safe house. “Does he know _you_?”

Natasha swung the door to the driver’s side open and stepped one foot in. “ _I’ll_ remember you.” Her voice softened, despite herself. “Always.”

Alexei didn’t respond. Natasha watched him watch her back out of his driveway.


	6. Rapture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Who sent you?” Bucky seethed, the man pinned beneath him. 
> 
> “Does it matter?” the man replied. He was smiling up at Bucky, like Bucky hung the moon. “We were all sent here for a reason.”
> 
> Bucky growled and grasped the man’s hair with his right hand. “ _Speak_.”
> 
> The man continued smiling. Natasha thought she even saw his eyes misting over. “We sing praises to your name,” he said.

Natasha stared at her reflection.

She looked just as she always had – with Bucky’s blood on her face.

Letting the water slide over her hands, she watched rust-colored water spiral down the drain. The frigid water shocked away the past few days’ exhaustion.

After she was done cleaning herself at the sink with the toiletries she brought, she decided it was time to check in with Steve.

he’s fine now.

She tossed the phone onto the counter and pulled out her clothes from the luggage. Clasping her bra behind her back, she couldn’t help but to stare at the bullet scar on her stomach.

They had really come a long way since.

The phone buzzed.

come home.

She wondered how Steve was managing. How Sam was managing _him_.

when we can

The reply came exactly one second later.

we’ll wait.

Natasha finished getting dressed, and pushed her arms through the sleeves of a black trench coat. She walked out of the washroom and found Bucky sitting by the benches, looking as clean as she felt.

His long brown hair was damp and curling near the ends. Just like her, he was dressed in all black and wearing a black leather jacket with matching leather gloves.

“Where’s mine?”

He dug around inside his bag and tossed her a matching pair. She slid them on so his wouldn’t stand out.

They walked together in silence towards the platform, looking like just any other couple boarding the midnight train. The area was deserted, conveniently so for them to have been able to dash in covered in blood half an hour ago.

The train came blaring on its way. Natasha walked over to the very edge of the platform.

As soon as it got close enough, she dropped the burner phone down onto the railway.

She turned to Bucky. “Come on.”

He was reluctant and she knew he was scared, although he probably didn’t remember how he lost his arm. They got in and tossed their bags into the overhead compartment. Natasha eyed their surroundings while Bucky gratefully sank into his seat. He still looked too pale to pass off as a healthy person, but there was nothing they could do about it.

“Sleep,” she told him. “I’ll keep watch.”

Bucky looked like it hurt his pride to let Natasha do everything, but he also looked too tired to object. He pulled his jacket tighter around his body and closed his eyes. Natasha noticed he was still shivering. Whatever Alexei gave him was good, just wasn’t good enough.

A little boy from a few coaches over started crying. Natasha barely paid attention to it at first, but something was starting to feel… _off_. She nudged Bucky, whose bloodshot eyes snapped open immediately.

She twisted around and opened fire at a man dressed in a gray sweater and slack pants who appeared from the back carriage.

Screams, everywhere. Someone sounded the alarm.

The man dodged out of the way and tossed a little device onto the floor. Bucky scooped it up, broke the glass window with his metal elbow and tossed it out. It exploded mid-air. Shards of glass rained down.

He whipped his gun out of his jacket and began shooting at another assailant, coming from another coach. It hit him square on the forehead and he fell stiffly like a board.

The first man began to run, so Natasha took off after him.

They raced down the aisle of frightened passengers out onto the roof. She planted her feet wide open, keeping her balance, gun trained on him.

“Who are you?”

“Who am I? Who are _you_?” She heard the menace in his tone clearly above the wind and the moving train.

Natasha aimed the gun higher, targeting his head. She crept closer to him. Her red hair was whipping in all directions. “I ask the questions here.”

“You’re forgetting where you came from,” the man spat.

Everything happened so fast. One second Natasha saw the glint of Bucky’s metal arm reaching out from the window down below, and the next thing she knew he had the man in headlock and wrestled to the floor.

“Who sent you?” Bucky seethed, the man pinned beneath him. The man laughed. It wasn’t even menacing anymore – it was just a polite chuckle, like they were old friends. “WHO SENT YOU?” Bucky bellowed, throttling him.

“Does it matter?” the man replied. He was smiling up at Bucky, like Bucky hung the moon. “We were all sent here for a reason.”

Bucky growled and grasped the man’s hair with his right hand. “ _Speak_.”

The man continued smiling. Natasha thought she even saw his eyes misting over. “We sing praises to your name,” he said, almost proudly.

Bucky tightened his hold. The man winced visibly. “What _is_ my name?”

Both Natasha and Bucky were fluent in about eighty languages, but the words spilling out between the man’s lips were foreign to them. He was speaking in tongues, eyes rolling back in his head.

The man’s hair in his fist, Bucky yanked it sharply. The man’s voice cut off completely, mouth open, frozen in the middle of his incantation. His neck was bent at a grotesque angle.

“Were those your trigger words?” Natasha asked. Her aim swiveled from the man to Bucky.

Bucky glanced at her but didn’t seem bothered by it. “If it was, he didn’t finish reciting it.”

He got to his feet and nudged the man off the roof of the train with the toe of his boot.

“You didn’t have to kill him.”

“Guess we got another train to catch,” was all he replied, wiping at his nose with his glove. It had started to bleed again. He brushed past Natasha to get back into the moving train.

She remained on the roof, her hair and coat flapping in the wind, looking down. At this height, the man’s body would shatter upon impact.

She wondered what it must have felt like for Bucky, all those years ago.

**

“I’d like to book a room, please,” Natasha drawled with a little Russian accent. She slid a card across the counter.

“Name, please,” the bored woman at the desk replied.

“Shostakov.” It was a little sick, Natasha had to admit.

“Room 428,” the woman told her, handing her a key.

“Thank you.”

Natasha and Bucky walked side by side, carrying their bags in between them. Bucky’s pace was slow, and his nose had bled one more time on the way this morning. She hoped that with proper sleep tonight, the serum would fix everything else.

The motel was a little rundown, but the room wasn’t too shabby. They had a small balcony, a TV mounted on the wall, a dresser, a double-bed and a clean enough bathroom with a tub.

Bucky arranged the bags near the doorway and wordlessly headed straight into the bathroom, locking it behind him.

Natasha went to the dresser and ripped off her wig, listening to him retch into the toilet. She hated going blonde – it definitely wasn’t her color.

The bathroom door reopened after some time. Bucky perched himself on the edge of the bed, breathing heavy. He looked like a pale Victorian ghost.

Natasha unzipped her shoulder bag and pulled out some saltines. “Picked this up at the convenience store. Eat, and take a nap. You’ll feel better. Also take some aspirins. Or you’ll feel like shit on the plane tomorrow.”

Bucky took the packaging but didn’t open it.

“What?” Natasha demanded, taking out her contacts. She hated blue eyes, too. “They didn’t have the goldfish ones.”

Bucky peered at her through the mirror. “We’ve done this before?”

She pulled off her fake eyelashes. “A few times.”

Bucky continued to stare at her reflection. She stared back.

He gently tore the plastic packaging, broke a corner piece of cracker and put it into his mouth, chewing unenthusiastically. Then he grabbed a pillow and tossed it onto the floor, sliding himself off of the bed.

“Don’t be dramatic,” Natasha chided him. “You need proper sleep.”

“I don’t remember a time where I wasn’t sleeping on a cold floor,” Bucky replied, already curling around himself and closing his eyes. “A warm carpet and a pillow is more than enough.”

Natasha didn’t argue with him, although she wanted to. She wiped off the excess makeup that was used to warp her features, getting closer and closer to discovering herself again, and saw him opening his eyes to look at her through the mirror just once more before falling asleep. She gave him a few more minutes to go completely under, before stripping down into her camisole and slipping on a pair of shorts.

When she was sure he wouldn’t rouse, she grabbed an extra blanket and laid it over him. Then she grabbed the remaining pillow and curled up on the floor as well, close enough to touch, but far enough not to.

Very softly, she heard Bucky whisper, “Goodnight.”

**

Natasha found Bucky studying the arrival board through a pair of sunglasses, their luggage next to his feet.

The airport announced, “Would all passengers traveling to France on flight FR3421, please have your boarding passes and passports ready for boarding. Flight FR4321 now boarding at Gate 21.”

“That’s us,” Natasha said, grabbing some of the bags. She passed Bucky his passport.

“Yaakov Shostakov,” Bucky read in a flat voice.

“And Natalia Shostakov,” Natasha replied, walking briskly towards the gate. She turned around. “James.”

Bucky stood where he was. “Who are these people?”

“James,” she said. “Not now.”

Bucky hesitated, flesh hand curled into a tight fist.

Natasha’s heart started racing, expecting him to turn the other way and run.

He picked up the bags and followed her.

**

Natasha rubbed the sleep from her eyes, stretching out her legs as far as she could. She turned to Bucky, who was looking out the window.

“I’m up,” she yawned. “You can sleep now.”

Bucky didn’t respond.

“James.”

“Who’s Shostakov?” he asked quietly.

Natasha leaned back heavily in her seat. “Nobody.”

Bucky finally looked at her. “Yaakov and Natalia, I get it. Shostakov. Who is he?”

“Why? Do you remember him?” Natasha challenged him.

Bucky stared at her, expression as blank as ever. “Who was your friend back there?”

“Which friend? Contrary to popular belief, I do have quite a few.”

“The one you _took_ me to,” Bucky hissed.

“You mean the one who _saved your life_ ,” Natasha snapped back.

“ _Who_ the _fuck_ was he?” Bucky’s voice was hushed, but it had the same effect had he barked it out loud.

“ _Why_?” Natasha demanded again.

“What did he do to me?”

“He saved you.”

“ _Why_?”

Natasha sighed. Clearly this _conversation_ wasn’t going to work unless one of them gave in and started answering.

“Because I asked him to.”

“Why?”

Natasha brushed the wig out of her eyes. It was brown this time. “Because I care for you. _Steve_ cares for you. _Sam_ cares for you, and he has never even had a conversation with you.”

Bucky clenched his jaw. Natasha knew what his next question was going to be before it even escaped his lips. “Why?”

“I told you.” She couldn’t say it again. Not when he was right here, so close within her grasp, just brimming below the surface of this body in front of her, yet still so devastatingly far away.

“And why did your friend agree?”

“Because he owed it to me.”

“ _Why_?”

“That’s not something I can tell you until,” she waved her hand over his body, “you’re completely here.”

“ _I am here_.”

Natasha felt a lump rising in her throat. _This is not enough_.

“They’ll come for me, you know,” Bucky told the hand rest separating them. “They’ll know someone’s taken me.”

“You’re not a hostage,” Natasha seethed.

Bucky didn’t answer. Natasha decided it was for the best.

“Maybe they’ll just think you’re dead,” she said.

Bucky looked back out the window. “So does the rest of the world.”


	7. Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do you need him for?”
> 
> “To be a leader,” the man replied, the pride and hope in his voice apparent. “To change the direction of the very axis this world spins on. No one will ever be the same after he ascends.”
> 
> “What?”
> 
> “To be _God_ ,” he beamed, looking straight at Natasha, newspaper abandoned. “In a Godless, godforsaken world.”

Witchcraft, Natasha thought, was a very peculiar thing. She believed in supernatural powers, but she absolutely hated the word ‘magic’.

From Mangkukulams to Obeah, she had collected as much data as she could from all around the world using a SHIELD laptop she had taken with her, but really, witchcraft and technology had very little relevance. Even Strange’s sorcery was not documented anywhere. Not officially, at least.

The universe was very vast, and just seemed to keep getting bigger.

**

Bucky was hunched over the wheel, lacking the strength to keep his spine straight.

“Why is your arm making that noise?”

“It…does that,” Bucky answered.

Natasha observed their surroundings through her sunglasses, looking at the reflection of a sedan through the side mirror. She popped open the glove compartment to retrieve her compact powder and retouched her makeup. It was three shades darker than her original skin tone.

Bucky signaled to the right, but took a left turn.

Natasha watched as the car followed them still. “It’s been following us from the airport.” She closed the compact and tossed it back into the glove compartment.

“If you leave it there, I don’t think you’re getting it back,” Bucky said. He was sweating again, his lips pale and eyes laden with dark circles.

“Not my color,” she said, adopting an accent. “It’s Californian gal Bridgette’s. I’m dropping her soon.” She took off the sunglasses and put it on the dashboard. “Or now.”

Twisting in her seat, Natasha shot through the back windshield with two guns, one in each hand, and watched the bullets hit both the driver and the agent in the passenger seat simultaneously in the head.

Chaos ensued as other cars on the street panicked, swerving to avoid ramming into the car. Bucky floored it, effectively fleeing the scene.

**

“Definitely wasn’t Hydra,” Bucky mumbled. “Too easy.”

“Amateurs,” Natasha agreed.

“Things are probably real hard for them right now that they had to send out interns,” Bucky deadpanned, pulling off his glove. His fingers were so pale his nails looked blue.

He rifled through the dossier they had dug out of the ruined car – before Bucky set it on fire, with the agents’ dead bodies inside.

“Has to be a trap,” Natasha observed. “How did they get ahold of something like this?”

Bucky pulled out a paper with his picture stapled onto the corner of the page, documenting the assassinations of famous figures, from Pedro Aramburu to John F. Kennedy. Natasha did a double take.

“ _Princess_ _Diana_?”

Bucky shrugged.

They found data and statistics about Bucky’s missions, and his disciplinary procedures. Some of them, Natasha recalled, were very accurate.

“Do you remember any of these?”

Bucky glowered. “The punishments? Like they were fucking yesterday.”

“The assassinations?”

He seemed to draw a blank for a minute. “Like…dreams, I guess. Faded ones.”

“Nothing about your arm, though.”

“Probably a red herring,” Bucky said. “Lose it.”

“Still, we might need it.” Natasha slipped it into her shoulder bag.

Bucky clenched his jaw in disagreement, but said nothing else. He pulled his glove back on, hand still shaking slightly.

Natasha scanned the rows of vendors lined up by the street, spying for any suspicious activity. “I’m getting croissants. You like croissants?”

Bucky flexed his grip around the wheel. Natasha knew his knuckles were white under the gloves. “I don’t know. Do I?”

“You did the last time we visited France in ’93.”

Bucky didn’t react.

Natasha glanced at herself in the mirror, noting how she looked nothing like herself. Maybe it was a good thing. She could try being someone new, like Bucky. On some level, she really envied him.

She opened the door. “Stay here.”

“You trust me not to take off?” Bucky mumbled, looking straight ahead through the windshield in a blank voice that matched his expression, avoiding eye contact. His knuckles were still tight around the wheel.

Natasha kept her hand on the door handle. “Yes,” she answered, and went off to order some pastries.

**

When the Asset malfunctioned, the measures taken to repair him were often more painful than the malfunction itself.

It was a punishment. Adding onto the punishment.

Logically, he knew he didn’t deserve it. But he also knew he did.

**

“You bought for an entire army?” Bucky was sitting on the bed wrapped with three layers of blankets. Natasha had found him earlier on the bathroom floor, passed out.

She finished arranging the croissants into a pile on a paper plate and started pouring coffee. “You have to eat,” she said. She spilled a drop onto the table. Well. She wasn’t on duty. She was allowed to be sloppy.

Bucky rested his head back, closing his eyes. His throat glistened with cold sweat. His arm was still whirring.

Natasha walked over and swept his drenched hair off his forehead, gauging his temperature. “You shouldn’t still be sick,” she said, more to herself than him.

“Just tired,” he breathed.

Natasha retrieved some paracetamols. “Take these.”

Bucky’s eyes opened barely wider than slits, but he popped them into his mouth and let Natasha pour some water between his lips.

She set the glass down next to him along with the bag of pills on the bedside table before drawing the curtains shut. He seemed to have fallen asleep, breaths coming long and even. Natasha was afraid his lungs might suddenly seize up again – they seemed to have developed a habit of doing so – but she shook it off.

She hastily scribbled a note, I’ll be back with dinner and slid it underneath the glass of water.

**

The park was swarming with civilians – families with little children getting ice cream, joggers with music blaring out of their earphones, and people skateboarding up and down the slopes.

Natasha took a seat on one of the park benches, tucking strands of red hair behind her ear; disguises be damned. They were coming. She wanted them to.

A dog started barking loudly at another woman’s dog. Its harried owner looked embarrassed, apologizing to the woman, dressed in black, who waved it off and continued her merry way down the path walk.

Then she spotted a teenager, staring at her sharply, smoking a cigarette right next to a “NO SMOKING” sign. She couldn’t possibly be a threat, either, daring to make eye contact like that so early in the game.

Natasha shifted her focus elsewhere, weeding out more suspects. She didn’t have to wait long.

A man walked up to her, smiling from ear to ear like a golden retriever. “May I have this seat?”

“Sure,” Natasha smiled easily. “What would be the harm?”

The man sat down next to her and spread open a newspaper. A fucking _newspaper_. He _wanted_ to get caught.

“Take me to him,” he whispered, shielding himself behind the paper.

“And what’s in it for me?” Natasha drawled, eyes casually taking in the green landscape surrounding her.

“You get to be a part of us.”

“Elaborate.”

“The woman in black, walking a dog. The man at the playground with that girl. The kid with the skateboard,” he said, pretending to be busy reading the paper out loud. “We are all one.”

Natasha scanned them again carefully. “What do you need him for?” She pressed in on her earphone for effect.

“To be a leader,” the man replied, the pride and hope in his voice apparent. “To change the direction of the very axis this world spins on. No one will ever be the same after he ascends.”

“What?”

“To be _God_ ,” he beamed, looking straight at Natasha, newspaper abandoned. “In a Godless, godforsaken world.”

Natasha’s eyes darted back to his entourage, scattered around the park. They had all been slowly closing in on her – walking the dog to the nearest tree, skateboarding in a wide circle around her perimeter; even the little girl with blond pigtails was straight on staring at her, as the man stood there holding her hand.

“What are you people?” Natasha breathed.

“If you don’t take us to him,” the main said, all the previous lightheartedness in his voice replaced with dark menace, “we will let him come to us.”

The man produced a gun from his jacket at the same time Natasha pulled one from her waistband, aiming at each other’s faces. Screams broke out as civilians took off running in all directions.

Three public chaos within the space of a few days – this was bad.

“He’s coming,” he said, almost gleefully. “He might not know it yet but oh, he’s coming alright.”

Natasha tightened her grip on her gun.

“One of you, four of us. That you can see, anyway,” the man grinned. Natasha carefully glanced at the other threats and realized he was right: even the little girl had a gun on her. "We," he beamed, "are legion." 

"Stay where you are," Natasha warned.

"Join us,” he smiled, white teeth gleaming bright in the sunlight, contrasting with his dark skin. “And we will _all_ …be one –”

Natasha swung her foot in an arc and knocked the gun from his hand before he could finish his sentence, simultaneously dodging the bullets darting in her direction. Landing in a crouch, she shot the man with one gun and pulled out another one to take out the woman.

The woman fell to her knees, but not before she returned one more bullet that Natasha narrowly missed. She tucked in her limbs and rolled herself away before spreading out and taking the boy with the skateboard by surprise. He went down with a bullet hole in his chest. Natasha swiveled around to finish the woman from earlier. She looked around but the poor dog was gone, probably frightened.

A sharp pain exploded in Natasha’s left leg. Pissed off, she shot the man, who never stood farther than a few feet from the little girl the whole time the shit show went down. The man collapsed. The little girl shrieked.

But it was the little girl who had shot her, her gun still smoking.

“Hey,” Natasha limped towards her. “Kid.”

She aimed a gun at Natasha’s face with steady hands, despite the tears streaming down her cherubic cheeks.

“Come on. I don’t want to hurt you,” Natasha said softly.

“But you did!” the girl cried petulantly.

Natasha had less than a second to decide. She had just killed the little girl’s father. Or guardian. She would now be passed from foster home to foster home, ending up as a government lab rat. Or worse, be recruited by another organization like the Red Room.

She pulled the trigger.

The little girl went down, blood spilling from the hole between her eyes.

Natasha convinced herself it was the kinder thing to do.

**

She all but dragged herself through the door of their hotel room. The receptionist hadn’t even looked up from her phone.

She had had worse injuries, obviously, but this still hurt like a bitch and she had lost a lot of blood.

The bed was empty.

Natasha scrambled through the drawer, the one she had stashed an emergency kit in. She limped to the bed and planted herself on the edge.

The bathroom door opened. Bucky entered her line of sight, dressed in a T-shirt and tactical pants, smelling of the hotel body wash.

She tried to dig the bullet out of her leg with shaking hands. Bucky didn’t say anything. He just knelt down, gently pushed her hands out of the way and got to work. Natasha gripped the sheets, feeling his cold metal fingers inside her.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

He pulled out the bullet and set it on the note Natasha had left him, now sealing it with her blood.

She felt him pressing a few painkillers into her palm, and swallowed them dry.

Then he grabbed a vial of alcohol and poured it over the wound. Natasha didn’t make a sound, but tears sprang in her eyes anyway. He started sewing it up and when he was done, he gently pushed her shoulders back to get her to lie down.

Once she was horizontal and somewhat comfortable, he got up and disappeared from the room. Natasha didn’t even hear the door. She waited but he didn’t come back.

She fell asleep before she could find out.

**

When Natasha next opened her eyes, it was dark. She saw the streetlights from the hotel room window.

“James?” she croaked. It felt she had been sleeping forever.

Bucky was sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, surrounded by an array of weapons. He was casually cleaning a gun. “Decided to pick up some of your slack. Dinner’s on the table.”

Just as he said it, Natasha smelled bouillabaisse and boeuf bourguignon from the tiny table by the corner of the room. “A man with taste,” she mumbled.

“What, you didn’t know that about me before?” he said flatly.

Natasha lifted up the blanket to look at her leg. It was swollen and ugly, but it will do. Her own serum will speed things up.

“You okay?” she asked, noting that some color was back in his face. She grabbed the little bag of pills she had left for him and rummaged around for more painkillers. She popped three into her mouth and drank from his glass.

“Fit as a fiddle,” Bucky mumbled, setting the gun down and picking up a knife. He started smearing it with oil. “You?”

“Fine,” Natasha replied, rotating her ankle. The muscles in her calf screamed, but her ankle could still move. “Thanks.”

“Where were you?” He hadn’t looked up at her once.

“At the park.”

“You’re gonna have to be more specific than that.”

“The one with the playground.” She knew she was infuriating him but right now, she didn’t have the strength to care.

“Bullied by children?” His sarcasm could drown any lesser man.

Natasha shrugged, unaffected. “Pretty much.”

He finally looked up at her. She blinked at him. “I’m serious. She couldn’t have been older than nine.”

He sighed. “I know.”

“What?”

“Took a little stroll while you were knocked out. You left quite a scene. It was almost a massacre, Natasha.”

Natasha glanced out the window again. She just realized how awfully quiet everything was. Even if you lived alone in a quiet house, there was a certain kind of silence in the dead of the night when the whole city was asleep.

“How long was I out?”

“You stumbled through that door at 2. It’s 4 now.” He paused. “In the morning.”

Natasha slowly turned her head to look at him. “Those weren’t painkillers you gave me.”

He didn’t look the slightest bit guilty. “Nope.” His lips popped on the ‘p’.

“Why the fuck?”

“Let’s not pretend like you weren’t dishonest with me first.” He started packing up all the weapons. “Why did you go without me?”

“It’s you they want. Why make it easier for them?”

“How did you find them?”

“They found us,” Natasha said. She pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from her coat pocket. “It was slid under the door while you were lying on the bathroom tiles.”

Bucky ripped it out of her hands. There was nothing on it but coordinates and the time to meet, the words and numbers cut out from various papers and magazines.

He looked like he was barely keeping a lid on his anger. “Stop running my life for me.”

“You needed the rest. You would have gotten killed.”

“You’re underestimating me,” he snarled.

“You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

“Stop acting like you know me. I don’t even know who you are.”

Natasha felt like she was hit by a bullet for the second time.

“You _know_ me.” She slid closer to the edge of the bed, closer to him, despite her leg screaming at her in agony. “You _know_ you know me.”

“ _I don’t_ ,” Bucky spat.

“Then why did you come with me all this way?” Natasha demanded. “If there wasn’t a single bone in your body that recognized me, why haven’t you just killed me by now?”

“Don’t tempt me,” he said, in a voice that sounded barely human.

“Do it,” Natasha goaded him. “I won’t stop you.”

Bucky clenched his fists so tightly they started shaking, his jaw clenched and teeth bared. His chest was heaving.

“Look at you,” Natasha whispered. “Like an animal on a leash. Your masters have forgotten you.”

That was all it took.

Bucky pounced onto the bed, just like an animal, and wrapped his metal fingers around her neck. They were hot – almost scalding against her skin. Something was wrong with the arm, Natasha knew.

“Is this _all_ that hand was made for?” she sneered, not even fighting. 

Bucky dragged her by her throat and slammed the back of her head into the headboard. She saw stars for a second. Her jostled leg was sending fire up her nerves.

“I hate you,” Bucky said, voice low and shaking. That hurt the most. “I _hate_ you.” His voice broke on the last syllable.

“Say my name,” Natasha demanded. He was on top of her, pinning her down by her neck, but she could still breathe for the most part.

Bucky’s eyes were swimming. “Who is Alexei Shostakov?”

“Say _my_ name.”

“Who is Alexei?!” Bucky barked in her face.

Natasha looked up into his glassy blue eyes. He was losing it, chest heaving so hard Natasha could feel it against her own. “Why does his existence hurt you?”

Bucky roared, but it was inching towards a scream. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He buried his face into her shoulder, metal fingers still gripping her neck.

“Listen. Listen to me,” Natasha said, gently prying his hand away. He released her easily, sobbing into the crook of her neck. She ran her fingers through his tousled brown hair. “Forget about him. We’ll just forget about him.”

He flinched away from her touch, lifting his head to look at the space next to her head. She quickly pulled her hands away, hovering mid-air.

“I – I don’t _understand_ ,” he said, saying the last word through gritted teeth. When he fixed his eyes on Natasha, they weren’t as angry as he sounded, just scared and confused, like a lost child.

“I was his wife,” Natasha said. “Alexei’s. Alexei Shostakov.”

Another tear rolled off Bucky’s face and he sat up, but she was still straddled between his legs. He snaked his fingers through his own hair, pulling on it. “Why do I feel this way?”

“Because deep down, I’m still in there somewhere,” she said softly.

Bucky was staring off into space, eyes empty and lips slightly parted, like he was too far gone to even to control his jaw muscles.

“Let me in.” Natasha gently laid her blood-stained hand over his metal one. “It was just political,” she explained, trying to reason with him, the same way she did many decades ago. “It was you. It’s always you –“

“SHUT UP,” Bucky howled. The sounds coming from the metal arm were starting to get concerning. Natasha wondered idly if they had attached a fail-safe mechanism in it. “Shut – shut up,” he gasped, choking on his sobs.

She complied, refusing to breathe another word until he was ready.

“Who _am_ I?” he demanded in a small voice, dropping into a whisper.

“You’re James Buchanan Barnes.” She watched as his muscles tense at the very mention of his own name. “And I love you.”

He grabbed the lapels of her coat and sharply yanked her up so they were face to face. “You don’t get to say that to me.”

“Don’t get too cocky,” Natasha said curtly. “I know more about you than you do about yourself. And I still fucking love you, through it all.”

Bucky bunched the hem of Natasha’s shirt into his fist and lifted it up. “ _Look_. Look what I did to you.”

Natasha fixed him with a defiant stare. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Bucky broke eye contact and immediately released Natasha’s shirt, like he was just realizing how rough he was being.

He made a move to get off of her but Natasha grabbed his hand. His metal hand. “I’m not scared of you.” He turned his head away so Natasha grabbed his cleft chin with her thumb and forefinger. “ _Look_ at me,” she ordered, her voice reverberating off the walls. “You feel it, too. Don’t lie to me.”

Bucky’s resentful gaze bore into hers, eyes bloodshot and eyelashes stiff with salty tears.

Their lips crashed together violently, his hands cradling her face.

Natasha pulled on his hair, snapping his head backwards and exposing his throat. She sank her teeth, feeling the vibration as he groaned.

Bucky wrestled her upper body back onto the bed, careful to keep away from her injured leg, and pinned her wrists down.

“This is what you want?” he panted.

Natasha blinked back tears, hot and stinging. “All I wanted was you.”

“Then take me,” he whispered.

Natasha yanked him closer and guided his lips back towards her, but he pulled back.

“James?” she breathed. “What’s wrong?”

“No. Let’s just get it over with,” he said, unbuckling his belt. “How do you want me?”

Natasha’s heart was still beating too loud in her ears, but now for a different reason. “N—no. Not like this.”

“Just _tell_ me,” Bucky snapped. “Let me be of use to you.”

“God, what did they do to you?”

“Do you want me to beg for it?” Bucky said. He clambered off the bed and got down onto all fours, head bowed. He looked at Natasha through the hair curtaining his face. “Do me as you wish. Please.” His jaw was clenched in contempt. “I’m all yours.”

Natasha slid down the bed, barely noticing the pain in her leg. She laid a gentle hand on his cheekbone. Bucky closed his eyes and pushed his face further into her palm. Like a kitten.

“Just be done with me.”

“No,” Natasha sobbed. “James, not like this.”

Bucky opened his eyes and glared at her, seeming both insulted and ashamed. He stood up before snatching his jacket and gloves hanging off the back of a chair. He marched towards the bedroom door with a few weapons and slammed it shut behind him so hard Natasha felt the floor beneath her rattle.

**

The Asset had run out of purpose.

They will get rid of him if he no longer served any purpose.

**

Natasha sobbed into the phone.

“Tasha?” The alarm in Nick’s voice was obvious. It was rare for him to lose his cool, but only because it was even rarer for Natasha to allow anyone to witness her falling apart.

“Send me the nearest Quinjet we have,” she sniffed. “To France. Now. I’ll give you the coordinates.”

Nick trusted her enough not to ask any questions. Which was just as well. For someone whose job requirement included lying about everything, she hated lying to people she considered family.

“Expect one in an hour.”

Natasha’s heart clenched. Bucky was probably already on his way to Siberia. “Half.”

“Forty-five,” Nick replied and hung up.


	8. Severed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were all gone. She was right.
> 
> He was no more than an abandoned animal.

It had taken forty-four minutes and seventeen seconds for the Quinjet to land on the roof of the hotel building, and it had taken her three more hours to reach Siberia.

As soon as she landed, Natasha stabbed an epinephrine into her thigh and jumped out.

**

The bunker was huge and desolated.

The whole place was covered in cobwebs and dust.

They were all gone. She was right.

He was no more than an abandoned animal.

**

Natasha ran in the direction of the sound – metal raging against metal.

Bucky was coming at the chair with everything but his teeth, until all that was left were pieces of mangled metal and a mangled man down on his knees, blood dripping from his flesh hand.

He didn’t make a sound, but from the way he was bowed and his shoulders were shaking, Natasha knew he was crying.

She walked slowly to where he was, his back still turned towards her and settled down on the floor right behind him. All she could see was the back of his neck, the way his spine stood out at the base. She wanted to kiss it, to bury her nose in his hair, wrap her arms around his chest and just keep him still for as long as she could.

And so they sat there for a long time, together, until Bucky finally said to the floor, “Please go away.”

“You say that a lot, but you always come back.”

Bucky curled over into himself even further until his forehead was almost touching the ground. “I can’t – I can’t do this anymore,” Natasha thought she heard him say.

She scooted forwards and gently touched his lower back, where his spine looked it was trying to break free from the suffocation of being under his skin. “Let’s go home.”

Bucky lifted his head, _finally_ , and turned to look at her with empty, bloodshot eyes. “Where?”

“Anywhere,” Natasha sobbed.

Bucky automatically took a cursory glance around the bunker. It made Natasha broke into desperate, agonized sobs.

“No. This isn’t it, James. Here is where they tore you apart, _repeatedly_ , and put you back together all wrong. Again and again.”

Bucky stared at what was left of the chair with dead eyes. “They made me.”

“They made you do awful things, but that’s not who you are. I _promise_ you th—“

Bucky shook his head. “They _made_ me.”

Natasha felt her mind just detaching itself from the rest of her. She felt dead already, along with whatever was left of her James. It was all gone.

“I don’t…know who I am without them.” He was still staring at the chair. “The pain, the torture… It made me what I am. They built me into a soldier.”

Natasha had the urge to wrap her hands around his throat and just… _squeezed_ , until he turned blue. Her mind strayed to the little girl at the park.

“I used to be the fist of Hydra. And now I’m just…a malfunction.”

She clasped his bloody hand between hers. “I swear, we’ll get you the best help the world has to offer. I’ll take you back to Steve. You remember Steve? You will. You won’t have to feel like this anymore.”

“You can’t fix this,” Bucky said. He looked at their intertwined hands as though it was a foreign object that somehow got attached to him, like the metal arm.

“Even if it kills me, I fucking will,” Natasha said. “Please, just come with me, James. Please.”

He didn’t agree, but he didn’t resist either. He just stared at his flesh hand enveloped by Natasha’s. It was cold.

Gently, Natasha tugged on it. He didn’t fight her, looking strangely dazed and stuck inside his head.

Taking advantage of the momentum, Natasha carefully pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go, okay?” she pleaded.

Bucky looked like he was already miles away.

His bleeding hand still in hers – covered in glittering glass and cuts – Natasha silently led him out of the room, past the desolated halls, out of the bunker and straight to the Quinjet. The army jet Bucky had stolen was a few feet away. She had to make some calls before anyone noticed it was missing.

“Okay?” she asked him. Without a single second of hesitation, Bucky walked in ahead of her, his hand slipping out of her grasp. He headed to the back and curled up on the seat. His eyes slid shut and strangely, he seemed to fall asleep almost immediately.

Natasha shut the hatch and settled herself in the cockpit. She tossed one final glance at Bucky’s sleeping form, just to make sure he was still there.

Was she kidnapping him? It sure felt like it. He thought she was his handler now. Maybe it was for the best.

**

He woke up to a jumble of voices. But they weren’t coming from inside his head. They seemed real enough.

The Asset’s head lolled around as he was shifted onto a gurney. The last thing he saw was the bright ceiling lights.

When he woke up once more, he was in the chair again.

**

“No infection. You should probably just lie back and take it easy for the next couple of days,” the nurse told her.

Natasha sneered. “I don’t think I have a couple of days.”

The nurse clucked. She looked middle-aged, exuding the kind of warmth Natasha associated with mothers. Not that she remembered her mother very well. Not at all, in fact.

“Honey, don’t these people give you days off?”

“I don’t work for the government anymore,” Natasha said. “Look, I’ve been walking fine. My body functions are enhanced.”

The nurse pulled the blankets up to her waist. “That’s why I said a couple of days, honey. Otherwise, I would have said ‘weeks’.”

“Where is he?”

“Pretty boy with the metal arm?” The nurse’s face distorted with sympathy and concern. “I’ve seen the news. I don’t think he’s good for you, honey.”

Natasha sighed and rested her head farther into the pillows. “I really need to see him.”

“Oh, dear,” the nurse said. “I don’t know. But I can ask the receptionist for you.”

“Thanks but I got it.” Natasha slid out between the blankets, already walking towards the door.

“Let me get you a crutch!” she heard the nurse call out from behind her.

She headed straight to the authorized wing, her gait betraying an almost unnoticeable limp.

His screams could be heard from inside the fucking elevator.

Natasha burst out the door and into the room where they had Bucky strapped down into a chair. A technician was twisting screwdrivers between the plates of his metal arm, while others in lab coats stood in front of screens monitoring graphs and charts as he continued screaming into oblivion.

“What is going on?”

“Miss Romanoff.” A doctor in a similar lab coat stepped forward. Her name tag said ‘Stormy.’ Natasha had never met a doctor named Stormy before. “We have to fine-tune his arm. It was overheating, and some screws were getting loose.”

Bucky sagged bonelessly in the chair, jerking every so often, rivulets of sweat pouring down his temples, neck and his flesh shoulder, catching his breath between screams.

“Did you give him something for the pain?” she shouted to be heard above him.

Doctor Stormy watched Bucky sympathetically. “He’s burning through them faster than his body could respond.”

A hidden panel in the arm popped open as Bucky let out another blood-curdling scream, his drenched hair curtaining his face.

“There we go,” the technician said softly. “Hang in there, buddy.” He nudged something in there as Bucky shook and panted, and a wire sparked.

Bucky’s head snapped back as another scream rolled out of his throat, his eyes rolling back inside his head. The restraints held his uncontrollable muscle spasms in place.

Natasha rushed over and laid her fingers over his flesh hand, noticing how the leather straps were digging into his wrist. He gasped, glistening muscles straining and veins standing out in sharp relief in his neck and forehead.

“Please. Kill me,” he said breathlessly.

“What did he say?” another doctor asked. “Was that Russian?”

Natasha pushed his sweaty hair out of his face, holding onto his hand with the other. He swallowed, his sweat-beaded neck tensing from the pain.

Turning to the doctors, she said very quietly, “He’s fine. Keep going.”

**

“You’re back,” Steve breathed, his arms wrapped tight around Bucky, with one hand cradling the back of his head. “Oh God, you’re back.” Steve’s voice cracked as he began to cry.

Natasha felt tense, like Steve was hugging a loose cannon.

Bucky let his arms hang limp against his sides, chin hooked over Steve’s broad shoulder. His thousand-yard stare seemed like it stretched on to the ends of the worlds.

Even dissolved, Hydra still managed to absorb what was left of him and kept it there in the abandoned bunker.

“Let’s get you to your room,” Sam said, but Steve wouldn’t release Bucky. “Steve, man. Don’t overwhelm him.”

Steve abruptly let Bucky go and wiped his own eyes with the back of his hands. “Yeah, yeah, sorry, Buck. You must be tired.”

Bucky just stared at the floor, his flesh hand shaking slightly.

Natasha never saw this before but Sam looked…taller? Or was it only because everyone else was being run into the ground?

“This way, to the left,” he said, leading the way down a short hallway. It was a suburban house in a suburban neighborhood with classic white-picket fence. Fury sure knew how to pick them.

Bucky turned to look at Natasha. It was all the invitation she needed.

“It’s fine, Sam,” she said. “I got this.”

Sam nodded, hanging back. Steve had turned away, head down with his hands in his pockets.

Natasha walked Bucky to his room, limping slightly. Her leg was getting better, but now with the adrenaline gone, the pain was becoming a little difficult to ignore.

Bucky’s room held the bare necessities – a bed, a drawer, a bedside table and a lonely wooden chair against the window.

“They’re still looking for me,” he mumbled, staring absently at the flower wallpapered wall. “I can feel it.”

“Is it your arm? Are they still pumping stuff into you?”

“No,” Bucky said. “I just. _Someone’s_ looking for me. They must be.”

Natasha nodded. “We’ll leave again first thing in the morning. You get to pick the country.”

Bucky’s shook his head ever so slightly, his expression picking up something that looked like…a wry smile?

Natasha was going to ask, but after pondering about it so long in her head, she realized the moment was gone.

She turned around to leave.

“Can you,” Bucky said, “stay?”

Natasha felt a wave of… _sympathy_. And she hated feeling sorry for him. He was way too powerful to be pitied, yet here he was. “Of course.”

Bucky clumsily crawled over the covers from the foot of the bed, like he was too exhausted to take a few strides to the other side, and let himself fall limp. His face was half buried in the pillows and obscured by his hair, but Natasha saw his blue eyes staring straight at her through tired, heavy lids.

She walked over and laid down next to him, lying on her side. They faced each other in silence, neither of them blinking even once.

Bucky finally let his lids shut the rest of the way, and Natasha fell asleep before ever seeing them open again.

**

“This is all your fault,” Steve spat, the hatred in his voice sending tendrils that crept their way around her neck, threatening to choke her. “I will never forgive you. I hope you live with this for the rest of your miserable life.”

“I’ll find him,” Natasha said. “I swear on my fucking life, Steve –“

“You can’t bring him back from _this_!” Steve screamed at her. “Not this time.”

Natasha ignored him, already suiting up with shaking hands.

“All this time you think you were so special – that you had some kind of connection to him – but it was just dumb luck and you’ve run out of it. He’s never coming back. Not to me, not to you –“

Sam’s scream tore through the chasm between Natasha and Steve. They rushed to the kitchen together, a team once again, to find Sam lying face down on the floor with a knife sticking out of his back.

“Bucky,” Steve breathed. “Bucky, what did you do?”

Natasha dropped to her knees next to Sam’s face. His dark eyes were open, and blood was trickling slowly out of his parted lips. His fingers twitched. Natasha laid her hand over his.

Sam really should have packed up the first moment he got. Or maybe Steve and Natasha never should have invaded his life in the first place.

Steve sounded like he was choking.

Natasha looked up to find Bucky with his metal hand closed around Steve’s throat. “James. Let him go.”

Bucky dragged Steve by the neck and slammed him into the wall.

“It’s just…me,” Steve grunted, unsuccessfully trying to pry Bucky’s metal fingers away. For all his efforts, Bucky decided to tighten his hold and lifted Steve a few inches off the floor.

Natasha watched as Steve’s legs kicked to find purchase. The blood vessels in his eyes burst.

“James, _please_ ,” Natasha pleaded. She couldn’t move – it was as if she was stuck in a horrible dream.

She heard the audible crack of Steve’s trachea, and his misery ended abruptly.

A hundred years of life, from a sickly boy to becoming Captain America, and he died by the hands of his comrade. The metal fist was his ruin.

Both of theirs, to be fair.

Bucky let go of Steve just as Natasha had requested, eventually. Steve’s body crumpled into a heap, bloodshot eyes wide open and mouth warped into the shape of a strangled scream.

Bucky stared down at her.

“Just end me,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”

She glanced at Sam to see that his eyes were still open, but he was no longer there behind them. She gently shut his eyes for him. “It’s all over now,” she said to no one in particular.

When she turned to look at Bucky, he was squatting on the floor and closing Steve’s eyes the way Natasha did for Sam.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said in a low voice. “It’s like. I’m in a dream. And I’m doing things, but it’s not me. And I can’t wake up.” He pushed his unruly hair back with his hand, and kept it there.

“You’re fine,” Natasha said. “You just forgot who you were.”

Kneeling in front of Steve, Bucky clasped his hands together.

Natasha thought he was going to say a prayer, for Steve, for himself, or beg for forgiveness, but instead she heard the bones in his flesh hand cracking in about ten different places under the force of the metal one.

“That won’t bring either of them back,” she said quietly.

“No,” he agreed. “There’s a reason the dead should stay dead.” He fixed his blue eyes on her. “They always come back wrong.”

“I wish you stayed dead, too.” It was freeing to finally say it out loud.

He casually examined his mangled hand. “Not too late to fix that.” He got to his feet and marched straight towards her. He ripped her gun from her holster with the cursed metal hand.

Honestly, she didn’t care which way the barrel was aimed at this point. She was done, anyway. With everything.

As it was, he held it against his own temple.

She didn’t try to stop him. She understood.

The sooner he got it over with, the sooner she could have her turn.

She closed her eyes.

**

Natasha opened her eyes to Bucky next to her, just staring at the ceiling fan.

“Slept well?” she asked, body still curled in his direction. Whatever nightmare she had was dulled to nothing more than a thought. A feeling.

He made a weird, grunting sound that Natasha figured was an affirmation. The fan was moving so slowly, round and round, and he was watching it with an expression so blank it was almost terrifying. Like seeing a dead body with its eyes open.

“James?”

“Hmm?”

“James, look at me.”

He turned his head ever so slightly.

“I’m sorry for what I said.”

He turned away to stare up at the fan again.

“About you being abandoned. I didn’t mean it. Like that.”

He didn’t give any sign that he heard her, but she knew he did.

“And I do want you.” She wormed an inch closer to him. “But I want you to want me, too.”

The only indication she had that he understood her was how sad his face got.

“Please say something,” she whispered.

“I don’t know how,” he said softly. “To want someone. To have my own desires. I wasn’t allowed to have anything for so long. So I gave up wanting anything.”

Natasha felt a tear roll down her eye and across the bridge of her nose.

“I think I remember,” he said, still staring at the ceiling, “being with you. In this body.”

The ache in Natasha’s chest echoed emptily all the way to the ends of her limbs.

“It’s him you want,” he said, “not me.”

The morning sunlight was streaming past the open window. Natasha watched silently as Bucky finally sat up, silhouetted by the light, and pulled the folder from the bag on the floor. He slid it towards her direction, careful not to look at her, like he knew she was crying and didn’t want to deal with it.

“I don’t want to keep secrets from you.”

Natasha wiped the tears away with her fingers and sifted through the folder with her dry hand. There was another letter that hadn’t been there before, crumpled with many fold lines, saying “We need you.” It was like the poison letter she found underneath their door at the hotel.

“When did you get this?”

“The day you and Steve found me.”

He knew they were after him. He had known all along.

“Who are they?” Natasha asked.

“I don’t know.”

“James.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Were you running from them? When we found you bleeding to death in that alley?”

Bucky picked at the flakes of blood from underneath his fingernails. “I wasn’t running from anyone. I had just completed a mission – it was a close call. And I just…never returned to Hydra.”

“I thought they cut you open.”

“They did. I cut myself open again. To get rid of the tracking device.”

“And these people?”

“I was passed out. I dreamt about this man telling me that I was going to change the order of, well, everything. I shaped the century – but he said I could recreate the universe.” He stared at his metal hand, observing the dried blood in its ridges. “Then he began that incantation.”

“The same one on the roof of the train.”

Bucky nodded. “Then I woke up to that letter next to me.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Bucky laid his metal palm very carefully back on the mattress. “It was an option. And he knew it.”

“Option for _what_?”

He looked her squarely in the eye. “If I couldn’t – didn’t _want_ – to return to Hydra, where else could I go?”

Natasha felt her chest caving in. Was it still a betrayal if he hadn’t actually done anything yet?

“How could you say that?”

“You wanted to me to honest.”

Natasha’s fists were clenched so tight; her entire body was shaking. “James, it’s a trap.”

“We don’t know that.”

“They got a little girl to pull the trigger on me.”

“And you killed her.”

“What is the matter with you?” She couldn’t stop herself from yelling.

“I don’t know,” Bucky muttered, like he said it just to dismiss her.

Natasha could feel her mind spinning and spiraling. “What’s going on in your head right now?”

“Nothing.” Judging by his expression alone, it was almost believable.

“What, do you want to go to them?”

He shrugged, like he was considering it.

“This is utter bullshit,” Natasha said, voice shaking now, too. He didn’t respond. “If you wanted to – to _become_ _one_ – with them, then why did you kill him? The man on the train?”

His eyes peeked up at her before flitting away. “Because I wanted Hydra to come for me first.” His body curved in on itself, like he was bending before splitting into two. “I _needed_ them to get me. But clearly, I was discarded. Like you said.”

Natasha felt sick.

“It’s not…what you think. I just. Need to belong to someone – somewhere.” He looked at her, almost pleading. “I’m a machine, Natasha. Why should I exist if I had no use?”

This was beyond anything she could have ever imagined. He was gone. He was really gone.

Good becomes great. Bad becomes worse.

His loyalty and trauma have all been magnified – and all on the wrong side.

Was this how they manipulated him all these years?

She had this unsettling feeling like she should be afraid of him. She had been feeling that way since before she even opened her eyes this morning to find herself right next to him. A spider caught in her own web.

“Then what are you doing here. With me.”

He looked just as lost as she felt. “It just…feels right.” He picked at his bottom lip absent-mindedly. “For now.”

Natasha tried to quell the throbbing ache in her temples from the blood rush of stress and anger. “I’m just a placeholder, is that it?” She scrubbed away her tears angrily. “Until Hydra comes back knocking, or a cult sends you a scripture telling you that you are next in line to be God?”

Bucky shook his head. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just the way I was made.”

Natasha crawled towards him, invading his personal space. “Then tell me. If Hydra gave you an order to put a bullet between my eyes, would you do it?”

Bucky flinched, like the thought of killing her was so foreign to him, so offensive, like he had never attempted it before. “Of course not,” he said through clenched teeth.

“And if I told you to kill them all, every last Hydra standing. Would you?”

He hesitated, but that was all it took.

 _“God_ ,” Natasha sobbed. She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t even look at him.

“I don’t want to kill anyone. That’s not who I am anymore.”

“And the cult?” Natasha cried. “If I told you to kill them, end all of this for once and for all, would you?”

Again, he stalled. Natasha’s eyes slid shut in hopelessness.

“I know what he said. The words,” Bucky said quietly. “I figured it out while I had you sedated yesterday.”

She just looked at him with hot, blurry eyes. She sat back, keeping him at arms’ length.

“It was everywhere, Nat. Carved into the tree barks. Curved around the perimeter.”

_Like a circle._

“They were luring you into a ritual.”

He nodded.

“What,” Natasha sighed, her breath still hitching from crying, “what did it say?”

Bucky recited it coldly. “Wither. Two. Hollow. Rapture. Father. Dormant. Soldier. Alone.”

It made the ache inside Natasha throb just a little more in ways she couldn’t explain.

“I did a little research, too. There’s not much about them in the deep web but there have been sightings. Thanks to internet theorists, conspiracies were mushrooming and some of them actually checks out. So I linked them up to cults dating all the way back to the fucking big bang. That symbol,” he nodded at the crest stamped on the folder, “represents the cult. Can’t figure out what they’re called. No one knows. There’s still plenty of them, though, scattered all around the world. Some are inbred, some are recruited. They feed off of spirits from the Otherside, but no one knows what they do. They were speaking in Rutnesian, a forgotten language as old as time. Those words only work with the Tesseract. That’s where they draw their magic from.”

“But why you?”

“I don’t know.” He looked away. “Maybe it’s this body. Hydra fucked with it. You see what happened to Johann Schmidt? Cursed off to Vormir?”

“Then we’ll find a way—“

“You’re not listening to me. The universe…has a balance. I’ve taken enough lives to upset it.”

“They’ll only make you kill more people.”

“ _I_ will kill _them_.”

Natasha didn’t want to say anything to hurt his feelings. “You’re tired and you’re not thinking straight –“

“Look. You don’t trust me anymore. And you shouldn’t.” He turned to look at her, all poker-faced. “Who are we keeping up this charade for?”

“It’s not a charade. I _love_ you.”

A second passed, before Bucky flinched away like Natasha had hit him. “Did I not teach you to always keep an eye open?” he said in a low voice to the wall opposite them.

Natasha breathed very slowly. “I thought you said that was him.”

“That was me.” He pushed his hair off his forehead, looking utterly exhausted.

“James, what –“

“Please,” he said to the mattress, “don’t push it.”

“No. I need to understand.”

“I’m _just_ – listen, I’m just as confused as you are and I don’t know how much more of _any_ of this I can take.” A drop of blood started trickling very slowly from his nose. He quickly swiped it away with a finger, leaving behind a thin smear on his face.

“Tell me one thing. Who are you right now?”

Bucky stared at her helplessly.

The desperation to just have him back was eating her alive. She would take anything – any scraps of him – and try to piece something back together.

“Sometimes,” Bucky said, voice shaking, and took a sharp inhale like he was trying to keep a sob from escaping his chest, “sometimes I can feel him thrashing inside me. Sometimes I can hear him screaming. But I don’t know who the fuck he is. It’s like I’m living with a prisoner inside this body.” He swallowed. “But I did this to him. I stole his flesh but I can’t get rid of him. And I feel…” He clenched his fists. “… _everything_.”

Maybe she had been asking too much of him. Both her and Steve.

“And I feel you, too. Somewhere.” He held his flesh shoulder with his metal arm absent-mindedly, curling in on himself, like he was trying to hide away from his words. “I just don’t know what it means.”

“Whatever it means,” Natasha said, “we can work through it.” Her voice rang out flat and hollow, even to her own ears.

Bucky shook his head. “This can’t be fixed,” he said. “And I don’t want it to be fixed.”

“And why not?”

He kicked the blankets off of him. “I just wish he died when he fell of the train.”

 _Me, too_ , Natasha wanted to say but instead, what came out was, “You remember that?”

Bucky shrugged. “Sometimes.” He looked faraway, lost in a memory. “Bits and pieces, like I’m in someone else’s nightmare.” He swallowed. “Steve never looked for me.”

Natasha felt her heart breaking. “He thought you were dead…”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky said quickly. “He lasted long, but not enough.”

“Steve?”

“No. Bucky.”

“Oh.”

“He fought Hydra so hard just to end up giving in. Agreeing to kill you, Steve, Fury, everyone.”

Natasha had exactly one second of numbness before her blood started pounding again in her brain. “What?”

Bucky looked away guiltily. “He would do anything they asked, as long as the pain ended.”

Natasha’s fingers automatically traced the puckered skin below her navel. “Did he…remember me at that time?”

“I think,” Bucky’s eyebrows knitted in concentration, “that was me. They wiped him and he was gone so I did the dirty work. But he agreed to it.”

Despite her leg sending fire up her nerves, Natasha got off the bed and walked straight out the door. She felt unsteady, like the world was spinning in all different directions all at once.

For all of Bucky’s agony about not knowing who he was, Natasha was realizing that she didn’t know him either. She never did.


	9. Dormant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s not him,” Natasha said, voice shaking. “We never got him back.” _Never fucking will._
> 
> “What are you saying?” Steve asked.
> 
> “It’s not – it’s not him,” Natasha gasped. She was losing her fucking mind. She knew she would, eventually, but not like this.

Natasha’s room, on the other hand, was even more rustic and utilitarian. Like her.

She spent the better half of the day locking herself in it, alternating between sitting against the wall and under the spray of the shower whenever she felt dirty and contaminated again by the betrayal.

“Nat? Is everything okay?” Steve tried the door. “Please. Let me in.”

When it was clear she wasn’t going to get up, Steve broke the knob clean off its hinges without too much noise. His eyes darted around the corners of the room, assessing the danger. When he found nothing but Natasha, her knees tucked under her chin, his posture relaxed.

“Talk to me,” he said softly, closing the door shut behind him. It swung back open a few inches.

“It’s not him,” Natasha said, voice shaking. “We never got him back.” _Never fucking will._ She stubbornly scrubbed at her eyes with the heels of her palms. She thought she had cried it all out.

“What are you saying?” Steve asked, folding himself down next to her.

“It’s not – it’s not him,” Natasha gasped. She was losing her fucking mind. She knew she would, eventually, but not like this. “He – he died somewhere between the cryotank and the chair. I don’t know.” Her hands were shaking again. Her entire body was.

“Tasha, stop,” Steve said, laying a gentle, firm hand on her bare shoulder. She was still in a towel, her damp hair cascading down her back. “You’re spiraling.”

“James. He agreed to kill me. _James_ , Steve. Not the Winter Soldier.” She felt like she was being swallowed whole and eaten alive and then spat back out.

“Are you hiding from him?”

“No.” Although she felt like she should. _He’s just a ghost. There’s no sense in being scared of ghosts._

“Let’s back up a little. What were you saying, before?”

“They tortured him into agreeing to. To eliminate me.”

Steve’s eyes softened. “Nat. There was probably barely much left of him at that point. You know the things they did to him…”

That was exactly what she kept telling herself. But what if it really was time to just give up her ghost?

“Come here,” Steve said, pulling her in for a hug.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Natasha whispered into her knees.

“You’re keeping him alive,” Steve said, voice muffled by her shoulder.

She almost felt like there was no point to all this. He had been long gone before he even became a weapon. “There’s nothing left of him to come back to this time.”

“It’s still him,” Steve said, stroking her damp hair. “You know it’s still him.”

_It’s not._

“Is someone still after him?” Steve asked.

Now that Natasha had the time to take a good look at him, she realized how he had aged since the first day Bucky’s mask came off. Gone was the authoritative leader he once was. He just looked…jaded, and very weak.

Captain America had regressed to Steve from Brooklyn.

Natasha hated that she and Bucky did this to him. She didn’t even know how many layers of masks Bucky had left on his face.

“There will always be someone after him, Steve.”

“Nat. I have to know. Did he ever remember me?”

Steve looked so young, so vulnerable, so old and weary.

“Sometimes,” she said. “In flashes. In dreams.” _He resents you._

The look on his face told her that that was enough for him, for now, to hold out hope that someday he might get his best friend back.

Natasha thought it would be easier if they were all dead.

**

It was hard to look him in the eye, knowing what she did now.

“I’m sorry. It was a lot I dumped on you this morning. And the mornings before. And for giving you those pills.” He had been standing in front of the open fridge, looking disinterested in its content. “And for ever having met me.” He paused. “All of the times you met me.”

Natasha pulled out a box of cereal from the cabinet and a chipped ceramic bowl from a drawer. She edged past him to peek into the fridge. “Want some milk?”

Bucky twisted away from her, like she said something wrong.

She grabbed the carton and searched for a spoon. “I don’t really do breakfasts,” she muttered.

“I noticed,” she heard him say.

She found a clean spoon and sank heavily into a chair. Her leg was mostly healed, but it was still sore.

“Look,” Bucky said, “if you want me to leave, just say the word. I’ll be gone before you could even blink.”

“Oh, I believe you.”

“So you want me to leave?”

She resisted slamming the spoon onto the table top like a toddler throwing a tantrum. “That’s what you want, right?” But there was nothing she could do to stop herself from being snarky. “Or you can’t, unless it’s a direct order?”

She finally looked up at him as he dropped his gaze to his own bare feet. “It’s not like that with you,” he said quietly. 

“Why not?”

He looked up at her through his hair. “You’re a friend.”

_I’d be damned to want more._

Distantly, she heard screams – screams that weren’t coming from inside her head – prompting her to look out the kitchen window just in time to see a man slitting his wrist with a pair of gardening shears.

Bucky busted the window with his metal arm as Natasha slid over the tabletop and jumped out. She landed on her feet and ran as fast as she could.

The man slit his other wrist.

“Put the gun down!” she heard someone who sounded a lot like Sam say, as she ripped the shears out of the weakened man’s weakened hands. He crumpled to the ground, swaying.

Another scream overlapped with the sound of a crash. She whipped her around to see a woman lying on the windshield of a car, her blood webbing in the cracks of the glass and the metal bent under her weight. It looked like she had just fallen from the top floor window, judging from the face of her terrified young son peering over the ledge.

The son himself was now climbing over, a calm expression overriding his previous features.

“ _Sam_ …” She hoped Sam had his wings on.

“I got him!”

He flew and snatched the boy mid-air, as another gunshot rang out.

Natasha held down the wrists of the man she had saved, trying to staunch the bleeding. From the distance, she saw Bucky wrestling a gun from another woman’s hand. She pulled out another from her waistband. This time, Bucky snapped both her wrists. She screamed.

Sam dropped the boy safely onto the ground, only for him to run towards a fence and…and impale himself on it.

“WHAT _THE FUCK_ IS GOING ON?” Sam shouted.

“They’re killing themselves,” Natasha breathed. The man underneath her, who was bleeding out from his wrists made a strange gargling sound. Natasha looked down to see that he had bitten his tongue clean off.

Bucky was holding another man, trying to keep him from…well, from Natasha could see, from plunging his own head into a barbeque grill. Bucky must have had him in a sleeper choke, as the man fell slack in his arms a few seconds later.

Another gunshot rang out from a house across the street. All Natasha saw was blood spattered on the window. A very dejected Steve Rogers exited through the front door, dressed in his civilian clothes.

It was total chaos. Cars were colliding into trees, into houses – some people even stepped onto the paths of oncoming vehicles on purpose.

Natasha stood up, covered in the man’s blood.

“What kind of neighborhood is this?” Bucky yelled, leaving behind unconscious barbeque man by his bare feet. More people were killing themselves inside their own houses.

Steve grabbed a man by the scruff of the neck and pulled him onto the side of the road as a truck rolled by. The truck, on the other hand, proceeded to collide with another truck coming from the opposite direction. He put the man into a sleeper choke like Bucky did, so he wouldn’t be a danger to himself anymore for the time being.

Sam folded his wings. “We can’t save them all!”

“That’s right.” There was a man standing there with them. “You can’t.”

“Man, where the hell did you come from?” Sam said.

“I came for you.” He was looking right at Bucky. “We are doing all this, for you.” He smiled like it was a blessing.

Bucky looked disgusted. Natasha was outraged.

“Who are you?” Steve demanded.

The man acted like Steve wasn’t even there. He took a step closer to Bucky. “We would be pleased to have you join our ranks, soldier.”

“They’re dying,” Bucky said through gritted teeth. All around them, chaos was still unfolding. Sam fled the ground to grab another man who jumped out the window of his house. There weren’t many civilians left alive. Steve looked confused.

“Oh, but you can bring them all back,” the man chimed. “They are all waiting for you, on the Otherside. Awaiting your command.”

“Bucky, no,” Natasha warned.

“Why me?”

The man looked sad. “All you’ve done for this world, and they treat you like a criminal. You don’t even know what you are capable of.”

“What do you want with me?”

“To make you a soldier of the entire universe. An immortal. A _god_.” He extended his hand. “Now, if you would be so kind as to come with us.”

Steve reached in and snapped the man’s wrist, like Bucky did to the woman. “Over my dead body.”

The man didn’t even seem to be in pain. He cradled his wrist against his chest, still smiling serenely. “I don’t do anything by force. Nor violence.”

“How do you explain all of _this_?” Natasha demanded.

“This is all their choice,” the man replied, gesturing grandly. Natasha caught sight of Sam with the man he had tried to save. He, too, had bitten off his tongue. “And it’s beautiful.”

“Looks like you and I have varying definitions of beauty,” Steve muttered.

The man held his hands up. The broken was already healed. “We hold peace above all else. I will take my leave now.” He stepped back. “You are already on your way. We’ll see you soon.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Steve shouted but the man had already dissolved into thin air. He turned to Bucky. “What was that?”

Bucky shook his head. “Later.”

“Is there anyone left alive?” Natasha called, looking around. She realized she had been holding onto Bucky’s jacket, clutching desperately onto him.

“No,” Sam called out mournfully, closing the eyes of the dead man.

“Where else is this happening?” Steve took out a communication device and wandered off.

Natasha looked at Bucky.

“It’s me they want,” he said quietly.

“No,” she said fervently, pulling him closer. “You don’t want this, James.”

Bucky turned away from her, ripping himself free of her grasp.

Sam joined them, the death of everyone around them reflected in his haunted eyes.

“You’re not responsible for any of this,” Natasha said softly. She glanced automatically at Bucky.

“It changes you when you’ve seen a partner die in the battlefield,” Sam said.

Bucky watched Sam intently from behind, expression unreadable.

“The damage was only limited to this area,” Steve reported back.

“It was an invitation,” Bucky mumbled.

“That you are not going to take, Buck.” Steve surveyed the surroundings. Dead bodies everywhere. And some that they knocked out. “SHIELD is on the way. And they will have questions.”

“I go back into a cell?” Bucky asked, somewhat threateningly.

“No one’s keeping you in a cell,” Steve said.

“Let me speak with them.”

“Fury? You tried to kill him the last time you saw him, Buck. Came pretty damn close to it, too. You’re lucky he’s not vengeful about it.”

Bucky had the same look about him as he did when he went on a rampage against the chair in Siberia.

“Just get in the house,” Steve instructed.

Bucky turned to glare at Steve. “ _Don’t_ tell me what to do.”

Steve squared up against him. “ _Don’t_ make me pull ranks.”

“You’re not my handler,” Bucky said flatly.

“Get in the fucking house, Bucky. _Please_.”

“He can’t,” Sam said. “The house is government property. You’d be biting off more than you could chew, Cap.”

Steve closed his eyes in defeat. He released a sighing breath. “Then make sure you stay out of Fury’s way,” he told Bucky. “I’ll handle him.”

Bucky didn’t seem to agree, but he also did not disagree. That was as much as anyone could hope for from him.

Steve turned to Sam, already expecting Natasha to take care of Bucky. “Let’s clean house.”

Natasha watched as both Sam and Steve disappear through the door. Bucky was about to follow, but she grabbed his wrist.

“Didn’t you hear the Captain? I have to go make myself scarce,” he sneered.

She didn’t notice this before, but he wore her hair tie on his wrist.

“What did he mean, earlier?”

“What?”

“That you were already on your way.”

Bucky tilted his head to the side, sighing. “I don’t know.”

“Well, are you?”

“ _No_. I don’t know what he meant by that.” Ripping his wrist away, once again escaping her, Natasha watched as he walked away towards the nearest bush, bent over himself, and threw up next to the dead body of a little girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that "Want some milk scene?" with Pierce in TWS? :'D


	10. Rogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “One strike, and he goes back into the refrigerator. _Two_?” Fury's eye bore into Natasha, then back to Steve. “I don’t care what either of you say. I’m putting him down like a dog.”

The folder clattered onto the glass tabletop. Natasha didn’t have to open it to know what was inside.

“Someone better start speaking,” Fury said. “The _truth_.”

“Will you turn on us?”

Fury’s one-eyed gaze at her was so sharp, Natasha could have been blinded. “Unless you turned on me first.”

“It’s nothing like that, Fury,” Steve said. “We had to keep it a secret.”

“From the _public_. Do I look like the fucking public to you?”

“You would have done the same in our position,” Steve insisted.

“You thought you couldn’t trust me?” Fury challenged them. “And you’re damn right. If I _was_ in your position, I wouldn’t trust me neither. But this is a global issue now – fuck that, a _universal issue_ – and your little fugitive is a danger to the citizens, or are they not your priority anymore, Captain?”

“Don’t demoralize me like that.”

“I put you up in a nice little neighborhood. I told you all to blend in. Play nice. Try and live like normal people. And now all your neighbors are dead.” Steve didn’t answer. He turned to Natasha. “Romanoff. Are you going to contribute to this conversation?”

Natasha had been sitting quietly in her seat for the most part. “I share this responsibility, and we both apologize.”

“ _Apologize_?” Fury sputtered. “What am I going to do with apologies? Now a weapon has been set loose. I may have lost an eye, but I always thought my nose was good enough to sniff out bullshit.”

“We are _not_ sending him away, Nick,” Natasha said. She was never one to beat around the bush.

“And if he goes _pew pew_?” Fury mimicked a pistol with his hand.

“I will be held accountable,” Steve piped up.

“Lives lost cannot be brought back, Captain.”

“I know that,” Steve said, grimacing. “I know that very well.”

Fury didn’t look pleased, but he was smart enough to walk away from a battle he knew he wouldn’t win. “Listen. You are no longer my responsibility. You know that. I know that. The fucking mold on my shower curtain know that. But the people still are.” He held a finger up. “One strike, and he goes back into the refrigerator. _Two_?” His eye bore into Natasha, then back to Steve. “I don’t care what either of you say. I’m putting him down like a dog.”

He turned away and disappeared behind the heavy double-doors with a loud, dull thud.

“You’re losing your edge,” Natasha said quietly.

“Maybe I never had one to begin with.”

“You’ve got chinks in your armor and I suggest you start counting them. Bucky is.”

“He knows all my weaknesses.” The fact that he said it so endearingly was setting Natasha’s teeth on edge.

“And right now, _he_ is your weakness and you bet your America’s ass he’s going to use it against you.”

Steve looked Natasha in the eye, but he didn’t challenge her. In fact, it almost looked like he agreed, so when he opened his mouth, the words betrayed his face. “Bucky would never do that.”

“That’s not Bucky. I keep telling you. Not all the way through. Not yet.”

“Well, I’m not giving up on him. Are you?” Steve said, finally finding the steel in his voice again.

“No, Captain.” She didn’t mean for it to sound so sarcastic.

Steve mindlessly went through the pictures of Bucky that came out from the folder. Most of them were from when Bucky and Natasha went travelling across the globe, trying to escape whoever was after him.

“I’ve been letting you down, have I?” he asked softly, not meeting Natasha’s eyes.

“I think you’ve been distracted.” Steve finally looked at her. “And if I have to take you out to save this sinking ship, I will.”

Steve nodded. “I trust you to do exactly that.”

**

When Natasha got home, Bucky was in the gym room, annihilating a punching bag. His hair was falling into his blue eyes, the rest pulled up into a bun behind his head. His body glistened under the bright fluorescent light.

“Should I be expecting a steel truck to escort me to a torture facility?” he asked breathlessly, hammering his fists into the punching bag in rapid succession. His face was still sickly pale, but his cheeks and lips were flushed from exertion.

“I won’t let that happen,” Natasha said.

With one final _angry_ hit, the punching bag split open. Sand poured out, burying Bucky’s feet.

“You can’t protect me forever, Nat,” he panted. He stepped out from the pile of sand, chest still heaving, and chugged down a bottle of water.

“Who dares stop me?”

Bucky just stared at her instead of replying, screwing the cap back onto the bottle with swollen, red fists. Natasha couldn’t stop staring at them. She felt awful – it was terrible timing and intrusive, considering that this Bucky in front of her was only the ghost of the man she loved – but those ragged fists were still her kryptonite, even after all these decades.

But instead, what she said was “I like your hair like this.”

Bucky turned away from her, bringing a hand up to his face as if the compliment made him self-conscious. She noticed his fingertips came away red, and it wasn’t from the punching bag.

“If you’re getting sick again, you need to tell me,” she said.

“Just a stupid nosebleed,” Bucky mumbled, now wiping his nose along the length of his arm. It left a long streak of blood. “I’m gonna take a shower.” The gym doors closed behind him.

Natasha walked over to the ruined punching bag, staring as the sand trickled onto the floor, like an hour glass. She absent-mindedly cupped her hand and watched it cascade through her fingers.

***

“We have to, uh, start packing,” Steve said that evening. “Fury is relocating us.”

Natasha laid her coat over the back of the sofa. She had just been about to head out. “Where are we going?”

“Duluth,” Steve said. He examined a weird, antique looking bowl. “I kinda like this bowl. Can I take it with me?”

“ _Duluth_?” Natasha mumbled. “Fury really is punishing us.”

“Just keep our heads down. Stay undercover. Or he’ll send us to Minnesota next.”

Grabbing her coat, she stepped out the door.

**

By the time she came back, the sky had darkened.

Natasha flexed her grip on the steering wheel, wiping the tears away from her face.

She drove into the desolated neighborhood. It was as quiet as a grave. Every house was dark, its occupants gone. Even the few Bucky and Steve managed to knock out to keep from committing suicide proceeded to claim their own lives in the hospital. Were they really being trained into soldiers out there, waiting for Bucky to lead them?

Not even a single streetlight was on, out of respect for the dead. It was a freak accident, the news said. The media was paid to keep The Avengers’ residency there out of the public.

The government wasn’t happy with them. Fury wasn’t happy with them. Ross? Ross wanted to burn them.

The entire town was sealed off “under investigation”, giving them time to pack up and leave before families of the deceased were allowed to collect their dearly departed’s belongings.

Natasha’s headlights illuminated the streets, still stained with blood. And then she saw him.

A head full of messy brown hair, looking almost golden under the glare of her headlights, some of his limbs spread out and others tucked underneath his body. A few feet away, was Steve’s crushed motorcycle.

Natasha jumped out of the car. “James?”

Bucky groaned.

“Don’t move.” He didn’t appear to be severely injured, despite the tears in his leather jacket and some scratches on his body. She lifted his hair away from his face. His forehead was bleeding, and he was running a temperature. He scrunched his eyes tight against the bright headlights. He looked as white as a ghost, and his nose was bleeding again. “What happened to you?”

Bucky turned his face away from the glare of the lights. “Thought I’d take a ride.” He sat up. “The ride took me out instead.”

“You have a fever. Let’s get you back.”

Bucky laughed. “I’m here because I want _out_.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s cold. Can you stand up?”

Bucky stood up fine, swaying slightly on his feet. He glanced at the rock bluff that loomed over the very street they were on.

“Did you just. Ride off the cliff from up there?”

Bucky just glanced at her.

“You said no more secrets.”

He turned back to look at her. “Fine. I wanted to see what’s on the Otherside. Can we go now?” He walked towards the car.

“You – you wanted—“ Natasha sputtered. “So you thought you would get a VIP pass?”

“Hey, everyone here _died_. I’m trying to settle the score.”

She eyed him carefully. “Are you drunk?”

He snickered. “I am. Can you believe it? A dozen bottles of straight vodka have me pissing like a horse.”

Natasha took a steadying breath. “James. We will get you help. I promise.”

“I don’t deserve it,” he said before she even finished talking, brushing her off. He turned away from the car and kept walking.

“Where the fuck are you going?” Natasha barked at the back of his head.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he shouted into the wind.

Natasha ran to keep up with him, but he turned around.

“Sam’s partner.”

She stopped short. “Sam’s partner what?”

“Riley, was his name, wasn’t it?”

“…yes.”

Bucky nodded, looking away, mismatched hands in his pockets. He swallowed. Natasha saw tears pooling in his eyes. “It was me. I, uh. I tampered with his wings. Watched him plummet from the sky like fucking Icarus.”

Natasha breathed the cold wind into her lungs.

“I don’t deserve to be here.”

He searched her face. For resentment, for forgiveness, she had no idea. Unable to find whatever he was looking for, he turned and walked away, lost and aimless, into the darkness of the night.


	11. Repeat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was like a horrendous game of war – Bucky kept hitting her with bullets after bullets, and she couldn’t go on taking hit after hit, pretending it wasn’t killing her.

“You were gone all day,” Steve said as soon as Natasha entered the house. It was a statement but he had just enough tact to make it sound like a question.

Steve’s things were all packed neatly into two boxes, waiting to go with them. In her mind’s eye, she saw Bucky being packed up in a box as well – one with a glass window and at freezing temperature.

“Where’s Sam?” Natasha’s knees were shaking.

“I don’t know,” Steve said, closing his book with a finger between the pages. “Upstairs, maybe. Where’s Bucky?”

“I don’t know.”

“He took my bike.” He returned to his book, not really caring for an answer.

“Maybe.”

Natasha took the steps two at a time. Sam’s door was open. He was sitting on the floor, papers scattered around him.

“What’s that?” Her voice sounded scratchy, even to herself.

“Paperwork,” he answered, barely glancing at her. “From the VA. Apparently, one can either be a counselor, or an Avenger. Never both.” He got up.

“Don’t you want to go back to being a counselor?”

Sam crossed his arms, shaking his head. “It would be a neat, simple life. But I got more to live for than that.”

It took her a few seconds to respond. And when she did, it was only with a nod. 

“What? You getting tired of me?”

“No,” Natasha said. “Thought you would be getting tired of us.”

Sam chuckled. He waved his hands at the mess on the floor. “All this? It’s whatever, man. I save lives. That’s what matters. I was raised a soldier. I will die as one.”

Natasha nodded stiffly. “I had a long day. I’m gonna hit the sack.”

“Sure,” Sam said, bending down to pick up the papers, separating them into different stacks. He looked like he needed a paperclip. “Goodnight.”

Natasha stumbled into her bedroom, desperate to lock the door only to remember that Steve had broken the doorknob. “ _Fuck_!” she yelled, slamming her palms against the wood. Sam and Steve must have heard her, but they knew her well enough to know when to interfere, and when to not.

She slid down with her forehead against the door, struggling to contain the sobs in her chest.

It was like a horrendous game of war – Bucky kept hitting her with bullets after bullets, and she couldn’t go on taking hit after hit, pretending it wasn’t killing her.

**

Natasha laid awake that night. Bucky hadn’t come back.

She watched the shadow of the trees outside her window play patterns on the wall. She thought about everything – the day she met him, when she was a frightened child; the first time he looked at her, really looked at her, when she was well into adulthood; the first time they kissed, tasting the blood on his mouth after they had beaten him to within an inch of his life; the first time she met him after a decade apart when he put a bullet right through her.

What if the man she loved never even existed? What if he was nothing but a jumble of lab experiments, a mess of chemicals, a list of trigger words?

But Steve was right. They made him. They tortured him to the point of insanity and then some.

Anyone else would have broken, the first year or two.

Bucky lasted seventy.

And Riley was just another victim on his ledger. As awful as it sounded, it didn’t change anything they didn’t already know – that he had claimed over a thousand innocent lives. It was only harder to look past because of how much _this_ victim meant to Sam, and was the last straw after realizing Bucky himself had signed for her death near the very end.

She could accept James ceasing to exist, if it meant he _had_ existed.

Her broken door swung open in the darkness. She saw his metal arm glinting from the hallway light.

“What bomb are you going to drop on me now?”

He stood silently in the dark.

“Why did you come back?” Natasha’s voice shook. Her tears fell.

“I didn’t know where else to go.” His voice was tired. Defeated. “It feels like I always come back. To you. Eventually.”

“What else do you remember?”

“I don’t know until I do.”

Natasha closed her eyes. She wondered if he would just leave again. She wondered if she wouldn’t prefer that.

“Did you tell Sam?”

Natasha opened her eyes. “I can’t ruin him like that.”

A few seconds of silence passed.

“Nat, are the Starks still alive?”

Natasha took a moment to locate her tongue. “Tony is.”

He walked further into her room uninvited. “The…Starks. Howard and Maria.”

“They both died, James. More than twenty-years ago.”

“Did I…”

“You did.”

“You knew?”

“Yeah, not too long ago. We all did.”

The breath huffed out of his lungs angrily. “Then why the fuck didn’t any of you just get rid of me?”

“Because we know that’s not all you are,” she said.

“To what end?” he snapped. “Yours?”

“If you wanted to get rid of me, you would have. Not just agreeing to it.”

“How much longer,” he said, voice colored with anguish, “until you can’t take it anymore?”

She didn’t answer. _Soon_.

“Your memories will come back. They always do.”

“And then they come and take me away again.”

“Hydra is gone, James.”

“Then fucking _somebody_ will.”

“No,” Natasha said fervently. “Not this time. Because you’re right. I _can’t_ take this anymore. I can’t keep having you ripped away from me. You don’t know what it does to me, having to reintroduce myself to you every time.”

“When? When was the last time they took me away?”

“Right before you assassinated Howard and Maria.”

The awkward silence and the darkness laid heavy on Natasha, until he said, “Why didn’t you come for me?” She heard him sob. “Why didn’t anyone come for me?”

If he only knew the lengths she had gone to retrieve him with nothing to show but scars and empty leads. “I tried.”

“I have – you have to understand. I _cannot_ do this anymore. Any of this.”

“Please stop saying that.”

“You’re not listening to me,” he wailed. “I have _got_ to go.”

“No,” Natasha sniffed. “It will all come back to you, I promise.”

“You don’t…” He swallowed. “You don’t know what it’s like to be afraid of yourself.”

His words hung in the air.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she murmured.

“I’m not asking you to be.”

Natasha wasn’t one to fire her bullets unless the situation called for it. But sometimes you have to make exceptions. “Listen to me. If you die, that’s exactly what they want. They will _use_ you, James. You don’t want more blood on your hands.”

“You don’t – you don’t _get it_ ,” he whispered. “I don’t know what’s right or what’s wrong. What if I wake up tomorrow and suddenly believe that the innocents are the enemy?”

She wasn’t entirely sure he was wrong. But you can only kill the love of your life so many times. Or rather, watch them be killed.

“And the words. What if I’m already working towards their agenda, and we don’t even know it?”

“James…”

“I’m a ticking time-bomb. I always was.”

“Can’t you see how they’re manipulating you? Winding you up just to see which way you’re gonna go?” She reached out in the dark and found his metal wrist. It was cold. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.”

“And what if there is no tomorrow?”

Natasha tugged on his wrist gently. Her hair tie was still there. It was his way of letting her claim him. “There is always tomorrow,” she said, voice tight and chest even tighter. She fiddled with the tie. “Even if tomorrow will be worse than today.”

He lowered himself next to her, and she wrapped her arms around him without a single thought. He hesitantly placed his mismatched hands on her lower back. Natasha noticed that he was running even hotter than he did when she found him next to Steve’s wrecked bike.

One way or another, she knew that their time was running out.

**

Bucky had been so tired that he fell sound asleep right next to her on the bed.

This morning, he had woken up looking pale white except for his flushed cheeks, which were burning from his fever. Natasha had urged him to stay in bed, and won the battle only because he fell right back asleep before he could argue.

“I didn’t hear him come in last night,” Sam said over a cup of coffee.

“It was a little after 5,” Steve volunteered, eyes looking puffy. “I was convinced he had run off.”

Natasha poured orange juice into a glass. “He’s in my room.”

Sam’s eyebrows went up. “It’s like _that_ now, huh?” He made a face. “It’s like that now, again, I mean.”

“He’s sick. I’m taking this up to him.”

Steve seemed subtly alarmed. “A cold? It was cold out last night.”

Natasha shook her head. “Just a fever.” She turned around to leave.

“What was he doing out there?” It was Sam, voice grave.

She turned back around. Sam was still looking at her for an answer, while Steve was avoiding eye contact, like he didn’t want an answer.

“I found the bike while I was out running this morning,” Sam went on. “Or, what’s left of it. And I know he’s not capable of accidents.”

Natasha wasn’t a liar, but she was exhausted. “We’ll talk later.”

When she reached her bedroom, Bucky was just as she had left him – except his eyes were open. “Sam deserves to know,” he said quietly.

“And what good will that do?”

Bucky let his eyes slide shut.

“Come on. Up.” Natasha propped him up against the pillows, and held the glass to his lips. He took a careful sip, eyes barely open. After a few swallows, he pushed the glass away and stumbled to the bathroom.

He clumsily dropped onto his knees in front of the toilet and wretched painfully. Natasha knelt down next to him and saw red blood escaping his lips.

He flushed it away quickly with shaking hands, panting.

“Someone’s coming for me,” he rasped.

**

“Fury called,” Steve said, entering the living room. “They’re sending over a Quinjet in two days.” He looked at Natasha. “Bucky will be taken in a separate one.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“Safety measures.” But it was clear Steve didn’t buy it either.

“And then what? Bucky’s jet _mysteriously_ crashes? Disappears into the fucking Bermuda Triangle?”

“That is, if they bother giving us a cover story.”

“He’s coming with us.”

“I told Fury that.”

“And?”

“Fury negotiated that Bucky be restrained with customized handcuffs inside a smash-proof glass box during transport.”

“Like an animal, is what you’re saying?”

Steve’s clenched jaw was an indication of an answer.

“You know,” Sam said quietly, putting away his StarkPad, “maybe Fury’s not being so unreasonable.” Both Steve and Natasha stared at him. “He’s unpredictable. I’ve worked with vets with PTSD. They are like ticking time bombs.”

Natasha looked away.

“Worse, they are loose cannons. You don’t know what will set them off, and when. And we’re dealing with a prisoner of war of seventy years here.”

“I can’t do that to him,” Steve said quietly. “We can’t add more to what he’s already been through. It’s not fair.”

From the way Sam was looking at Steve, arranging his words carefully on his tongue, Natasha already knew it wasn’t going to be good.

“For the safety of the public, it’s more than fair.”

“He is not a threat, Sam.”

“He is a threat to _himself_.” Sam turned to Natasha. “He tried to kill himself, didn’t he?”

Natasha glanced at Steve. “He did.”

Steve sighed, chin dropping to his chest.

“This is for his own good,” Sam concluded solemnly.

“You’re not wrong,” Steve said softly. The heat had left his body a long time ago.

“Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me we know what we’re dealing with here?”

“He needs help, and we’re getting him help,” Steve said.

“How can you help if you don’t know where the problem starts and where it ends?” Sam said. “The – the, what? The _cult_? What the fuck is up with that? And Hydra – is that why he’s still sick? What about his mind? His morals? Are those still compromised by Hydra?”

“He helped save the citizens,” Steve reminded him.

Sam shook his head. “I hate to say this but what if it was an act? He knows more about the cult than he’s letting on.” Sam splayed his fingers over the coffee table. “Tell me I’m wrong, Nat.”

“He doesn’t know any more than we do. And I’m not a liar.”

Sam sighed. “I’m not saying you are...”

“Neither is he.”

“I don’t have anything against him. I swear. But I’m the only one with an unbiased judgement here.”

The haunted look in Sam’s eyes every time he mentioned Riley flitted across Natasha’s mind.

Steve nodded. “Fine,” he said. “But we have to ask Bucky first.”

“He was still sleeping, last I checked.”

“SHIELD’s got the best doctors. He’ll be fine.”

“We can’t take him back to SHIELD,” Sam said hesitantly.

“Fury’s pissed, but he won’t sell us out to Ross,” Natasha interjected.

Sam didn’t look very assured, but he didn’t argue. He stood up. “I’m going out for a run.”

Steve looked out the window. “Again? In a dead town? That’s morbid, Sam.”

He stood up and smiled tiredly. “Getting a little crowded in here, is all.”

With how fragile everything was and how strung out everyone was becoming, everything they had was one misstep away from falling apart.

Steve watched Sam head to the door with a guilty look on his face. Sam turned back around, one hand on the knob. “I’m the last person to judge a traumatized vet. But something’s wrong here,” he said quietly before shutting the door behind him.

Steve sighed deeply, like Sam was an actor in a play who had been forgetting his lines and had finally exited the stage.

“Just say it,” Natasha said quietly. “I can take it.”

Steve looked at her meaningfully. “Where were you yesterday?”

“I had loose ends to tie from my little world tour.”

“And where was Bucky?”

“I don’t know. I left before he did.”

“And he left soon after you did.”

Natasha paused.

Steve stared at her. “When you found him, were the scratches on him still fresh?”

“Yes.”

“And I checked the mileage on the bike. He could have made it to Timbuktu and back.” Steve waited a moment longer, and when it was clear that Natasha had nothing to say back to him, he got up and left the room.


	12. Intermission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I hate you,” she said through blurry eyes, clutching at his frail flesh shoulder and the collar of his shirt. “I fucking hate you. I hate you.”
> 
> “So hit me.”
> 
> So Natasha did. She slapped him across the face. Once. Twice. Bucky just took it, eyes closed, like he was used to it. He probably was.
> 
> “End me,” he said, eyes still shut. “I know you want to.”

The Asset remembered pummeling his metal fists into the mission’s – _Steve’s_ – face.

Steve never brought it up.

The Asset wished he would.

**

“Ready to go?” Natasha asked.

Bucky looked even worse this morning. The skin under his eyes were such a deep shade of purple, startlingly contrast against his sickly pale parlor.

“I want to stay,” he rasped. “Here.”

Natasha heaved a silent sigh. “What changed?”

Everything.

“Doesn’t –“ he paused to suck in air into his lungs “—feel right.”

“I thought you followed orders. Not intuitions.”

“You don’t know me.”

“You’re right,” Natasha said.

She turned away from his room and made a beeline for the kitchen. Steve was frying something in the pan while Sam stood near the toaster, waiting for it to pop.

“We’re not leaving,” Natasha said, pouring herself a glass of cold water from the fridge. “Apparently.”

“Unfortunately it’s not up to him to decide,” Sam said.

Natasha swallowed the water like a shot of liquor. She could feel the frigid liquid crawling its way down her intestines, weighing heavy at the bottom of her gut along with her anxiety.

“Did he say why?” Sam asked, too intense to be casual, his attention diverted from the toaster. He jumped when the toast popped.

“Nope.”

Steve turned off the stove. He was making omelets. Before he could even get a plate out, Bucky stood in the kitchen entrance.

“Oh hey, what are you sneaking around for?” Sam asked. At this point, Natasha wondered if Steve had somewhat lost use of his voice.

Bucky stood still as a statue; face just as stony, too.

It was like seeing a dead body wandering around, not knowing he was dead.

“Sit down,” Sam said, pulling out a seat for him. His smile was wide and friendly, but the tension radiating from him was palpable. “Eat something.”

Bucky took a seat next to Sam, who was watching him tentatively from the corner of his eye. Steve set down four plates and scooped out equal amount of eggs for Sam and presumably Natasha, and heaping portions for Bucky and himself.

“Super-soldier metabolism,” he said, head down, shoulders hunched.

Sam went straight to business, salting and peppering his meal. He looked at Natasha, raising his eyebrows and gesturing at her empty seat. Natasha shrugged back, sipping on her cold water, but it really was just so she could hide half her face behind the glass.

“How’s the arm?” Sam asked.

“Functional,” Bucky replied flatly. The fork shook visibly in his flesh hand.

Sam’s eyes darted to Steve and back to Bucky. Clearly, they had had a discussion. “Do you think you’d be better off if it was removed altogether?”

Bucky stared at Sam. Sam looked slightly unnerved, unconsciously shrinking back into his seat.

“I understand how traumatic it can feel, having it forced onto you in the first place.”

“No,” Natasha interrupted. “He’ll be left defenseless.” And a lesser concern in fucking Duluth.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Bucky mumbled curtly.

“Okay, okay,” Sam agreed quickly. “But this is the longest you’ve kept it on, right? Might want to get someone to look at it. Do some maintenance.”

Bucky’s jaw clenched, staring at the tabletop. He paled even more visibly. “I had that done in the hospital before we came back.”

Sam nodded easily. “Okay. Good, good.”

“Not eating, Buck?” Steve asked, finally speaking directly to him. He kept his eyes on his plate, unseeingly.

“What are you gonna do, spoon-feed him?” Natasha mumbled.

To his credit, Steve ignored her.

“Sorry I ruined your bike,” Bucky said.

Steve pushed his food around with his fork, still not looking at Bucky. “Don’t worry about it.”

Bucky lifted his fork and started eating. He seemed to enjoy it. Another bite. Chew. Swallow. Fork. Chew. Swallow. He was starting to look more and more human as he ate.

Until he stopped.

“You okay?” Sam asked.

Bucky got up abruptly, his fork clattering onto the table, and rushed past Natasha.

Steve got up to follow but Natasha fixed him with a stare that made him sit back down.

In the nearest bathroom, all three of them listened as Bucky gagged and heaved.

Steve carefully set his fork down, staring blankly at the tabletop. It hurt him to see Bucky like this.

“He hasn’t fully transitioned to eating…real food yet,” Natasha offered.

Steve sat back in his chair. “Then what has he been eating?”

“Saltine crackers.”

 _“_ Just that?”

Natasha rinsed her glass. “In between what little pieces of meat he could tolerate.”

“We hadn’t really had time to…assess him, the first time.” Natasha could hear the doubt in Sam’s voice. “Is he okay in there? Sounds like he’s throwing up his liver.”

“He hates being pacified.”

“Some things don’t change,” Steve mumbled.

When Bucky was finally done, he came back to announce that he would be in his room. Natasha knew it was a lie.

Which was why she was surprised when she opened his door and found him lying in bed, just as he said he would.

“Came to call my bluff?” he sighed, eyes closed, wrapped up in his covers.

“You’re going to keep up pretenses until you finally have me fooled?”

Bucky cracked an eye open. “How many men have died trying?”

Natasha shut the door behind her and pushed the lock.

Bucky sat up. He still looked a little pasty. “I don’t want to fight with you.”

“Neither do I.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “So what now?”

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing?” He looked genuinely confused.

“I don’t know, James. I really don’t.”

“Did Sam and Steve say something to you?”

“No,” Natasha sneered, “like what?”

“Exactly. Like what?” he seethed.

Natasha clenched her jaw.

“You don’t trust me after all, do you?”

“How can I when you’re not being honest with me?”

“I _told_ you, no more secrets.”

“Where were you yesterday?” Natasha asked. “Before you played tango with the bike?”

He stared her down. “You first.”

“You followed me.”

Maybe the worst part of it all was that he had her so distracted, she failed to see it herself. She wouldn’t have realized this if Steve hadn’t said anything.

“Did you tell Madame B I said hi?” he said darkly.

“I needed answers. Could you blame me?”

“I am right here,” he said, voice rising.

“You wanted me dead.”

“Finally, a sign of self-preservation. I taught you well.”

“Your eyes are still exactly the same and it makes everything worse.”

Bucky exhaled, looking like he had had a brilliant retort but Natasha had beaten him to the punch.

“What do you want me to say?”

Hot, angry tears ran down her cheeks. She swiped them away, sighing.

“Just tell me what you want to hear and I’ll say it.”

“I don’t want you to lie to me.”

“I _never_ lied to you.” Bucky pulled his knees to his chest. He looked so small, and delicate – making the metal arm seem even more foreign and forced onto him. “I’ve done worse things to you but I never lied.”

Natasha brushed her palm upwards from her forehead to her hairline, trying to clear the mess in her head. “I don’t know –“ Her voice cracked, so she tried again. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

Bucky didn’t flinch. He didn’t react at all. But Natasha knew it hurt him.

“You should just let me go,” he said quietly. 

“Why are you so eager to go from being someone’s bitch to the other?”

“Because I am nothing without a purpose!” Bucky screamed. “I need – I need an anchor. I need _orders_. I said this so many times – I need to be made into something for someone.”

“What do you want?” Natasha asked. She could feel her chin trembling. “Power? You want to be the Winter Soldier just so you could feel something?”

“It’s all I know,” he said quietly.

“And you…you think that going back to the people who abused you is – is reclaiming that power? They took everything from you!” she shrieked. “You should be furious with them. You should – you should want them dead, like I do. You don’t owe them a fucking thing. Look at…” She sighed, the anger already leached its way out of her. “Look at what they’re doing to you still.”

Bucky looked away.

“You could have killed me if you really wanted to. There was no way I could have survived you twice.”

He laughed humorlessly. “Madame B told you that?” He rested against the headboard, like he just remembered how tired he was. “She always has underestimated you.”

Natasha wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “ _Fuck_ all this!” she cried.

“I told you. It’s like I’m in someone else’s memory. Not mine.”

“Did you stick around long enough to hear me _beg_ her to take you back?”

Bucky bristled.

“Because I did. But she wouldn’t.” Natasha was always taught to fight fair, by Bucky himself, no less, and she needed him to fight backbecause she had a lot more punches to throw. “I would rather you go back to the fucking Red Room so you can fulfill your _purpose_ or whatever it is you think you need. They’re no worse than Hydra. Oh, but that’s exactly it! You want to be hurt. You love being in pain. Because your entire existence is nothing without it.”

“And you were a big part of it,” Bucky said. He didn’t even seem angry; just defeated. “You did things to me. You got things done to me.”

Natasha stood up straighter.

“When I got my teeth pulled out, one by one? That was you.” His nose started to bleed again.

“James, I did no such thing.”

“You convinced me that I could escape my handler. That we could run away together and never be found.” Tears pooled in his stony eyes. The blood trickled down to his lips in a thin line. “Well, I couldn’t. And we didn’t.”

It turned out that Bucky had been holding back, too. Because words – hateful, _hurtful_ words – kept spewing out of his mouth. His blood-stained teeth were bared as he snarled each word at her. “When they peeled the skin off my spine? That was you, too. You visited me in my cell and they caught you. They didn’t lay a hand on you. It was me. It was always me.”

Natasha slammed the door shut behind her and walked into another fight.

She heard Steve’s voice from the kitchen and headed towards it. “Then let me _do_ something –“

“You can’t fight them all –“

“He did!” Steve said through gritted teeth. “All those years, he fought _everyone_ who dared lay their hands on me – he would have fought God himself just to keep me alive during all those cold winters. He’s all I have, Sam.”

Natasha wanted to hit Steve for saying that.

“This isn’t your fight, Steve,” she cut in. Her breaths were still hitching, the way it does when someone just had a violent cry. If either men noticed, they knew they had a bigger fish flopping about on the table waiting to fry right now.

“Then fucking _whose_ is it?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Let’s all take a step back,” Sam said, “or a few,” he added, looking pointedly at Steve. “We have all been under a lot of strain this past couple of weeks.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Steve mumbled, pacing aimlessly.

Sam waved his hands away. “Right, right. Now the cult. What are we going to do when they come back down from heaven or wherever it is they think they come from?”

Steve looked at Natasha, eyes sad again. “Do we know whose side Bucky is on?”

Natasha looked away.

“This is what I’m talking about,” Sam said softly. “I’m not blaming him. I’m not. But he’s more PTSD than he is Bucky Barnes right now.”

“Whatever we do, Bucky has got to stay alive,” Steve said – pointedly at Sam, for whatever reason – like that wasn’t still their end goal no matter what.

“We can’t do that alone,” Sam said. “We need to get him back to DC first.”

“And do what, Sam?” Steve asked. “Fury’s no longer Director. Ross is on our asses. SHIELD’s buried with fucking Pierce. All there’s left is a building full of staff who hasn’t been laid off yet. Thor’s not coming back to Earth. Wanda and Vision are off in some fantasy multiverse. And if I somehow manage to contact Tony, as soon as he sees Bucky again, he’ll be shoving a missile into his mouth and out his ass.” The helplessness in his voice was contagious. “We’re on our own.”

Sam didn’t voice any other opinions after that.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Steve suddenly hissed, flinching. He looked like he saw a ghost.

Natasha whipped her head around to the direction Steve was looking at.

Bucky stood there in the door frame with a pair of scissors in his flesh hand. His hair was cropped choppily in a terrible mess, but Natasha knew what Steve saw because she saw the exact same thing.

“I need to get rid of it,” Bucky said. His knuckles were tight around the scissors, jaw clenched. He could barely stand. “All of it.”

“Easy, soldier,” Sam chuckled nervously, coming up behind him. He gently pried the scissors away. “I got you,” he said, in a voice that was too gentle for casual conversation with another full-grown man.

Bucky headed back towards his bedroom, feet dragging. Sam followed him closely, like he was expecting Bucky to keel over anytime. He threw a sharp glance at Steve and Natasha before disappearing out of sight.

“Is he—was that an episode?” Steve said, sounding alarmed.

“No,” Natasha said, feeling awfully empty. “That was just Bucky breaking through.”

She wished she believed it herself.

**

The Asset didn’t recognize the man in the mirror as himself.

Which was fine. He didn’t want to be himself ever again. He didn’t want to be anyone.

He wished he didn’t break the chair. He wished he was a machine again.

**

“Don’t get your hopes up, is all I’m saying,” Natasha heard Sam say.

“He’s getting better,” Steve said. The determination in his voice could bend steel.

“It’s just a haircut.” The sympathy in Sam’s tone could easily be passed off as patronizing. “He said they – they used to pull on his hair and make – make him…”

Natasha rounded the corner. “Quinjet’s on the way,” she said. “Get your things.”

Steve was staring at Sam with a look of growing horror, but was distracted by Natasha and the sight of her carrying her luggage. Sam was avoiding eye contact with either of them, hand rubbing his own forehead, trapped in the terror of what Bucky must have told him.

Despite everything that they have all gone through separately, Natasha thought that life was unfair to Sam the most.

“As long as we stay here, it’s like there’s a ticking time bomb somewhere, and I just can’t find it.” Natasha walked towards the door. “We settle in Duluth like Fury wants, then I’m taking him away again.”

Steve looked like he couldn’t believe his ears. “Have you thought this through?”

“Insult me _one_ _more_ _time_.”

“Natasha,” Steve said. Sam’s elbows were on the edge of the table, his hands cradling the top of his head like he was shielding himself from all the madness that Steve, Natasha and Bucky had brought into his life. “Let me do something. Anything. I’m losing my fucking mind.”

Natasha took another glance at Sam, who was as still as a statue. Her heart ached. “We all are.”

Without another word, Natasha headed straight towards the front door. Steve’s light and graceful steps were right behind her.

But Bucky was already there, standing loose-limbed in the hallway. His entire body was shaking.

“Bucky,” Steve breathed. He couldn’t pull his eyes away. Sam did a good job with Bucky’s hair. Natasha wasn’t even alive in the 40s, but she had leafed through enough history books, trying to get to know the man she loved before he lost himself.

“Out the door,” Natasha ordered.

Bucky looked at her ever so calmly. “I’m not going anywhere.” His voice was so low and weak Natasha had to strain to hear him.

She stared right back. “Then I will fucking leave you here.”

Bucky didn’t even blink. “So do.”

Natasha dropped the bags. “What sick game are you playing with me?”

Bucky glanced at the Quinjet hovering outside, with government agents waiting for them. “I’m not playing. This is where we part.” He looked at Sam and Steve. “All of us.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve said. He always looked sick to his stomach whenever Bucky acted like this.

”I’m dying and I’d like to do it in private.” He headed towards the stairs, moving slow and sluggish.

Natasha raced around Steve and charged up the steps straight into Bucky’s room. She locked the door and tackled him, both of them tumbling down onto the bed.

“I hate you,” she said through blurry eyes, clutching at his frail flesh shoulder and the collar of his shirt. “I fucking hate you. I hate you.”

“So hit me.”

So Natasha did. She slapped him across the face. Once. Twice. Bucky just took it, eyes closed, like he was used to it. He probably was.

“You’re using him. That’s why you did this,” she seethed, pulling on his freshly cut hair. Her tears were dripping all over his chest.

“End me,” he said, eyes still shut. “I know you want to.”

“You will never be Bucky.” Natasha punched him in the jaw hard enough they both heard something crack. “And you will never be James.”

“Just end it all,” Bucky said between coughs.

She threw her fists into his chest. “He died and I will make peace with that someday. You will not taint his memories like this.”

This time, Bucky grabbed her wrist and laid her palm against his chest. She used to be proud of how she could recognize his heartbeat anywhere, either by touch or hearing the monitor from a couple of cellblocks away.

She regretted it now, now that it was beating inside of someone else.

“If I could die looking like him, it would be closure for everyone,” he said through gritted teeth.

“I don’t want it.”

“Stop trying to save me.”

“I _can’t_.”

Bucky rolled them both over so he was hovering on top of her. His jaw was already starting to bruise. “You can’t save me or you can’t stop trying?”

Natasha laid still and limp underneath him, eyes shut, sobbing. Her tears ran hot and fast through the corners of her eyelids. “Both.”

Even without seeing him, she could feel how broken he was against her. He nestled the top of his head in the crook of her neck. Just from the slight tremble and bunched muscles in his body, she knew he was crying, too.

“I can’t let you die, James,” she whispered.

Bucky just laid quietly on her chest, breathing heavy like the action alone exhausted him.

Maybe this was all they were destined to be. Two lost souls finding each other again and again, throughout different decades in different bodies. A ghost and a spider, deadly and venomous, sad and furious, broken and breaking.

**

In the end, they never made it to Duluth.


	13. Draft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was driving her slowly insane.

The Asset wished there was something he could be a part of. Someone he could belong to.

He had always been sickeningly lonely, but never like this.

So close to the people who loved him, people he was supposed to love back.

He almost wished they were all dead. Just like him.

**

Steve had been so joyful and merry; it was honestly breaking Natasha’s heart.

Sam still had that haunted look on his face whenever Bucky was around, seeing the ghosts he had had to deal with under Hydra. It had changed him – if before, he was trying to save Bucky for Steve and Natasha, now he was doing it out of pity.

And also, of course, out of the kindness of his heart but Natasha knew even the kindest people had at least one bad bone buried deep within them, rotting away.

“What did it look like?” Bucky asked.

“What?” Steve asked back.

“My left arm.”

The question caught Steve off guard. “It looked like…your right arm.”

Sam snickered.

“Come on, Steve,” Bucky insisted. “You’re the only person left alive who ever saw it in the flesh.”

If Bucky didn’t seem too sad about it, Natasha refused to let herself be sad about it.

“What do you want me to say?” Steve said distractedly, body bent forwards and eyes focused on hanging the baubles carefully on the Christmas tree. “That you had six fingers?”

“Did I have six fingers?”

Steve straightened up and stared at him. “No.”

Bucky shrugged.

Steve climbed up onto a chair and teetered dangerously.

“If you die from something this stupid, I swear I’ll never visit your grave,” Natasha warned.

“I can’t reach the top,” Steve said, handing Sam a star ornament.

Sam blinked up at the star. “You want me to fly?”

Steve shrugged, exactly like Bucky did.

“I’ll just. Get a ladder,” Bucky volunteered, heading towards the storage room.

He looked like he was adjusting pretty well but Natasha had no idea how long the lie would hold.

“Hey, what’s for dinner?” she asked, reclining back on the couch with a glass of eggnog. “Besides store-bought turkey.”

“Pizza,” Steve said, arranging and re-arranging the boxes under the tree. Everything had to be perfect.

“It’s Christmas, and you’re ordering _pizza_.”

“If he isn’t Captain America,” Sam mumbled.

“What, can either of you actually cook?” Steve asked.

Bucky came back with the ladder, letting his metal arm do most of the work. He set it up next to the tree.

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve said, smiling at Bucky like he had rescued a baby bird.

Steve had been acting weird and jittery around Bucky a few days after Bucky’s accident, but after moving into SHIELD headquarters, things were slowly turning around. The threat of the cult was dulled to a constant fly on the wall in the back of their minds.

So Natasha decided to chalk up his behavior to stress and the fear of losing Bucky, at least until proven otherwise.

“Do the honors,” Bucky said.

“You want to?” Sam offered. _Casually_.

“Yes, Buck. You want to put the star on top?” Steve said, anything he could do to make Bucky look more like a normal human being again.

Bucky put up his hands. “No, I don’t really…”

“Why not? It’s just a star,” Steve said.

“ _Jesus_ , I’ll do it,” Natasha groaned, setting her eggnog onto the table. “Out of my way.”

Bucky hadn’t had Christmas in seventy years. Push him too hard and you’ll push him away.

She grabbed the star from Sam’s hand and easily glided her way up the ladder. Making an exaggerated show of placing the star on top, she mimicked a chorus of angels. “ _Aaaaaaa_!”

Sam had been recording the whole thing, apparently. Whatever.

“Merry Christmas Eve, everybody,” Steve said. Natasha swore he had tears in his eyes. “I’m just so glad we could all be here today.”

“Cut it, grampa,” Sam said, but there was a soft edge to it.

“Let’s eat,” Natasha said, but she was looking at Bucky.

Bucky’s lip curved up in a smile, but it was the saddest smile she had ever seen on anyone.

Steve was already carving the turkey. He sliced through the bone like it was butter, cutting right through Sam’s china. “Oops,” he said sheepishly. Sam looked so forlorn it was hilarious. Or maybe Natasha was just an asshole.

Mashed potatoes and salads were passed around, along with stupid jokes and wholesome banters. Even Bucky laughed. He had had enough practice by now to make it look even more convincing.

“Lasagna’s getting cold,” Sam said, scooping a slice into his plate. “Want a piece, Bucky?”

Bucky shook his head politely, but drained his glass of wine like it was water. No one reacted.

Steve demolished the rest of the lasagna. Natasha she felt like she could see Bucky getting thinner and thinner throughout the entire dinner. Soon there would be nothing left of him.

She used to think that taking him home would be hard, but it turned out keeping him was even harder.

Every morning she woke up convinced she would find nothing but cold sheets on his side of the bed. And if he didn’t run off into the night, she was sure he wouldn’t make it through the day without succumbing to himself. And if he somehow managed to keep himself alive, she was scared to death that his unidentified illness would be the one to finish off whatever was left of him. And if that didn’t take, she lived in constant, crippling fear that Hydra or the cult or someone will return to claim him.

It was driving her slowly insane.

“I can’t,” Bucky said, rising from the table. His cutleries clattered onto his plate, his flesh hand shaking. He was looking pale again. “Sorry. Excuse me.” He headed off towards the bathroom in brisk steps.

They watched him leave.

“It’s been a month. Why is it that he still can’t keep anything down.” Sam said. It was probably meant as a question, but what was the point when no one had an answer.

“Do you think Alexei was fucking with you?” Steve asked Natasha.

“He wouldn’t. Not like this,” she answered, full of unwavering confidence.

“You have to wonder, Steve,” Sam began, tossing his salad around with his fork, “if he’s doing this to himself.”

Something about Steve’s posture shifted. Natasha couldn’t decide if he looked defensive, or weighted down, or maybe both.

“The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him. _Physically_ ,” Sam said.

“We’ll find other doctors.”

“Trauma is a very delicate thing.”

“He wouldn’t do this to me.”

“That’s the thing,” Natasha interjected, “it’s not about you. Not everyone is capable of doing the right thing all the time and stand back up after every hit the way you can.”

“I’m doing my best to help him –“

“Your self-righteous bullshit has to stop.”

It did stop Steve from saying anything else, at least.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha told her napkin.

“Don’t be,” Steve said. “You’re right.”

Steve and Natasha had been fighting a lot less, or had been finding ways to make up for their fights a lot more, but damages were still done from time to time.

“I’m gonna. Yeah.” Steve pushed his chair back at the same time Sam said, “Well, I guess dinner’s over.”

The three of them cleaned up in silence, and when they were done, they separated into their separate spaces. The Christmas presents will have to wait till morning.

Natasha entered the bedroom she now shared with Bucky, quiet as a mouse, just in case he had fallen asleep.

But Bucky was in the bathroom, with the shower running. Usually, she would call out his name just to make sure he was alright – without making him feel like an incompetent – but tonight, she didn’t need to, not when she could hear him crying through the door.

His sobs were loud and urgent, uncontrollable and heartbreaking.

Natasha laid a palm gently on the door, standing awkwardly there for what felt like hours.

Finally, she twisted the knob and found Bucky in the tub under the spray of the shower, curled in on himself. He was shaking and coughing on his own tears, head tucked between his knees, his clothes clinging to his bones.

Natasha slid in behind him, bracketing him between her legs and snaking her arms around his chest, burying her face in the spot where his neck and metal shoulder met.

The water was cold as ice, but it was what reminded him of home when she couldn’t.

**

Bucky was coughing so hard he could barely breathe in between, his lips taking a faint blue tinge. His hands were in tight fists, body curled into a fetal position, coiling itself together while his lungs fell apart.

Blood spattered on the pillow case, already damp from Bucky’s sweat.

Natasha dabbed at the blood trickling out of his nose with a tissue. He barely noticed.

“Steve’s making some calls. Someone will be here soon.”

“No,” Bucky gasped. He kept choking on each breath he managed to drag through his airway. “They’ll know – I’m – c-comprom—mized.”

Natasha mopped up the sweat beading on his forehead as he fought for air. The air whistled down his throat.

“You’ll die,” she said gently.

The entire world depended on him surviving, like he always did.

Bucky coughed once more, so deep that it took out whatever was left of him. He went limp a for a while, the wheezing sound in his chest the only sign that he was still alive.

**

“I’m so – Bucky, I’m so sorry,” Steve sobbed.

The Asset never had anyone apologizing to him before.

“I’m sorry that you had to finish all my fights for me. I’m sorry I let you get on that train with me and I’m sorry I couldn’t – save you.” Steve was sobbing so hard he could barely breathe. “I’m sorry I never looked for you. I’m sorry you never got to say goodbye to your parents, to your sister – God, your sister. I’m sorry – I’m sorry you woke up missing an arm and I’m sorry that I let them kill every last piece of you. I’m sorry for everyone you killed and I’m sorry that I’m still failing you.”

The Asset was not programmed to accept forgiveness. Nor seek it.

The Asset felt his metal hand raised to Steve’s lips. “I’m so sorry, Buck. I’m so fucking sorry.”

**

Steve jumped when he saw Natasha standing in Bucky’s doorway. He laid Bucky’s hand down gently onto the bed and wiped at his eyes. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Not long,” Natasha said. “How is he?”

Steve readjusted Bucky’s blankets, even though they both knew Bucky hadn’t moved for hours. “He’s asleep.”

Bucky was so white that his dark, damp hair stood out glaringly. An oxygen mask was strapped onto the lower part of his face, while various wires ran in and out of his right arm. The monitor beeped steadily.

“Doctor says he’s going to be fine, Steve,” Natasha said.

Steve nodded tiredly. They both knew it didn’t guarantee anything.

“Any intel on the cult?”

“Nothing,” Natasha answered. “Same old, same old.”

“The gears are in motion,” Steve said. “We just don’t know what.”

Natasha nodded tiredly, too.

“Do you think…do you think Bucky needs to be put back in cryo?” Steve asked.

It caught Natasha by surprise. “Why?”

“What if it heals him?”

“It doesn’t,” Natasha insisted. “The doctors said so.”

They were all grasping at straws at this point.

“He’s going to be fine,” Natasha repeated.

Steve nodded again, just as tiredly, if not more.

That was more or less how things went, the same pattern repeated again and again, like they were all stuck on a merry-go-round neither one of them could escape from.

But someone was bound to jump first.

**

Natasha woke up to someone stroking her hair.

“Hey,” she smiled, so glad to see Bucky’s eyes finally open again, even if it was just a tiny fraction.

He smiled back, her bright red hair still tangled in his metal fingers.

“You need anything? You feeling okay?”

“Better,” he croaked.

She had fallen asleep earlier, her head resting on her arm along the side of his bed. Her spine was begging for help.

“I hate this,” he whispered through the oxygen mask.

Natasha ran her thumb soothingly over his eyebrow. “It’s just for a little while. I promise.”

“Where are Steve and Sam?”

“Sam is on an assignment. Steve was here for a while.” Natasha stretched out her back.

“C’mere,” Bucky said.

She gingerly climbed into the bed, careful not to jostle him. Settling her head under his jaw, she closed her eyes. She hadn’t known peace in a very, very long time.

“I snuck a gun under your pillow, just in case,” she said.

She didn’t hear so much as feel the weak chuckle against his throat.

They laid in silence for a while, his metal arm around her slowly warming from her body heat. Natasha thought he had fallen asleep again until he said, “How come you never called me Bucky?”

“You don’t look like a Bucky.”

“What’s a Bucky supposed to look like?”

She thought about it. “I don’t know. Bucky’s a little boy’s name. It’s hard to imagine you ever being little.” Joyful. Innocent. Unbroken.

“What did you look like when you were little?”

She ran her fingertips idly along his chest as it rose up and down. He was still running a temperature, but he was breathing and that was all that mattered. “I don’t know. You used to say I looked like Pippi Longstocking. Without the stockings.”

“Huh,” he said into her hair. “I don’t remember.”

She snorted. “What a surprise.”

Very softly, Bucky asked, “We’re going to be okay, right?”

“Of course we are,” Natasha replied.

“Okay,” Bucky said.


	14. Split

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She tasted his blood, too, when it ran into his mouth. It tasted like metal, and rust. All the things he was mostly known for. It broke her heart.
> 
> His blood smeared as she trailed kisses down his neck and onto his chest, and onto her as well as he did the same.
> 
> Natasha was used to wearing Bucky’s blood on her skin.

It hadn’t been easy.

Everyone, especially Steve, was acting like they were in a Christmas holiday movie, even though it wasn’t, really. Which was why it took Natasha off guard when he was the first to break down.

“It’s like reanimating a dead corpse,” Steve sobbed into his hands.

Natasha knelt down next to him on the floor.

“I was wrong,” Steve gasped. “I was wrong. That’s not Bucky anymore.”

Natasha had nothing to say, so she said nothing.

“How do you do it?” Steve asked, his blue eyes swimming in tears.

Natasha shrugged. “I just love him no matter who he is.”

“And if he doesn’t love you back?”

Natasha felt that familiar ache of emptiness in her chest. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

Steve wiped the left half of his face with his left hand, and kept it there. “If I had just looked for him…” He choked. “After he fell off the train.”

“Don’t do that to yourself.”

Natasha heard Bucky before she saw him, rounding the corner from the hallway.

Steve glanced up at him from the floor, but didn’t say anything. He just sobbed into his own knees.

“It’s okay,” Bucky said. “If you don’t want to keep pretending, then I don’t have to, either,” he added quietly.

Steve looked back up at him. “You’re my family, Buck. You always have and you always will.” He sniffed. “And I will always be here, whether or not you think you are.”

Bucky just stared at him.

“You can be whoever you want to be. You can start over. That’s more than enough for me.”

Bucky shook his head sadly. “It’s not.”

“Bucky.”

“You need Bucky Barnes back to feel absolved.” Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha saw Steve wince. “And you can’t get that from me.”

Bucky’s cold words seemed to have Steve frozen. Looking almost guilty, he got up and walked away.

Natasha hurried after him, catching up to him while he waited for the elevator. “Why did you do that to him?”

“I tried to relief him from his guilt.” The elevator slid open. “It didn’t work.”

Natasha realized she had gotten the context wrong. “You care about him,” she said softly. Bucky rolled his neck irritably. Natasha got into the elevator with him.

“What do you want from me?” he sighed.

For someone she had spent almost half her life with, it was hard for Natasha to get a grip on his state of mind. He was erratic – sometimes he was quiet and somewhat absent despite his physical presence, but other times he was warm and…funny, even.

“I want to live my life without worrying that you’ll be gone the next time I turn around.”

Bucky shook his head. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

“Why?” Natasha asked hollowly.

The elevator doors opened and they stepped out together. She realized belatedly that it was their floor.

“I don’t feel like I belong here,” he said quietly, heading to the bedroom.

“But you belong to Hydra? The _cult_?” Natasha blinked her tears away. “You try so hard to be someone for all these people – for Steve – why can’t you just work on being someone for yourself?”

Bucky chuckled dryly. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

He opened the door and Natasha shut it behind them.

“Start today. Here.”

The way he was looking at her, it was almost like he was piercing right through her, making her ache endlessly. “I can’t be what you need, Nat.”

“Just – just be whoever _you_ need to be,” she said.

“I don’t want to be unfair to you.”

“You’re not.”

Bucky’s shoulders hung loose. He folded himself on the floor. He still avoided chairs that didn’t come with tables. “I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Natasha said.

“And what if I end up doing something unforgiveable?”

“You could never do anything that would be worse than what you’ve al—“Natasha cut herself off.

Bucky stared at her.

“I’m sorry that it…it came out like that,” she said remorsefully. “James, please don’t look at me that way.” She reached out but he recoiled from her.

“Don’t touch me,” he said, voice clipped.

Natasha perched herself on the edge of the bed.

“I want you to be right, though,” he said to the floor. “But I could still definitely do worse.”

**

Natasha had been reading one of Steve’s books by the bay window. It was a quiet day and Bucky had been sleeping all noon. She didn’t realize she had fallen asleep too, until she woke up to Bucky and Steve having one of their dark and depressing conversations somewhere out on the front balcony.

“I think you should start grieving your friend.” Bucky’s voice was low and the wind was loud, but his voice carried. “The sooner you start doing that…”

“I think you need to take some time too, to...to grieve for yourself, Buck.”

Bucky replied almost instantly. “I can’t grieve someone I never knew.”

Natasha could picture Steve’s face before he even started speaking. “That’s what kills me the most.” His voice was trembling, like Natasha knew his lips were.

She heard the sound of Bucky rubbing his flesh palm against his jeans. He had been developing a habit of doing that lately. “Grief is just the ghost of love.”

“No,” Steve shot back. He didn’t sound angry. Just heartbroken. “I think grief is more powerful than love itself.”

Bucky said, “Yeah, only because you know it’s too late.”

Steve didn’t say anything after that.

Natasha heard the door open and close. She knew it was Bucky just by listening to his footsteps. She closed her eyes and pretended she was still asleep.

**

“Hello, boys,” Natasha said, bringing in the groceries from the car.

Bucky and Sam were playing video games in the living room of their common floor, sitting cross-legged on the carpet with their knees touching.

“Hi,” Bucky replied. “Did you get me quinoa?” Sam asked. Neither of them even glanced at her, too engrossed in their virtual mission.

“Yep,” Natasha replied, making her way to the shared kitchen.

“Come on, man, don’t kill me!” she heard Sam laugh.

Bucky stayed silent.

Natasha put away the groceries into cabinets and the fridge, when she realized she had left her phone in the car. She passed by Sam and Bucky again, laughing and yelling, hands tight around their consoles and fingers hitting buttons in a frenzy.

She stepped out of the elevator on the floor of the garage, only to find Steve sitting there against the wall, cross-legged like Bucky and Sam were. But unlike Bucky and Sam, Steve just looked like he wanted to be yelling.

“Didn’t see you when I came in,” Natasha said, slowing her pace.

Steve didn’t reply, head bowed.

“What are you doing here?”

Steve pulled up his knees into his chest. “Was going to take a drive. But I didn’t know where to go.”

The balcony, and now the garage. He seemed to always be on the verge of escaping, but never fully sure if he should.

She settled across from him.

“I keep…waiting. For the other shoe to drop.”

“That’s no way to live,” Natasha told him softly.

“It’s not,” Steve agreed. After a minute, he asked, “Is he okay?”

“You don’t think he’s okay?”

“I don’t know. He spends all his time with you.” Steve seemed to realize the connotation of what he had just said and quickly added, “I’m not jealous. I just. I miss him. I’m tired of missing him.” He hadn’t met her eyes even once. “He’s right here and I still miss him.”

He looked like he still had more to say, so Natasha kept quiet. She didn’t really know how to respond, anyway.

“I thought…” The air whooshed out of Steve’s lungs in frustration. “I don’t know what I thought.”

“Expectations are dangerous, Steve.”

He didn’t say anything for a while.

“How was he? With you?” he asked softly. “While you were both in the, uh, Red Room.”

Natasha traced invisible patterns on the granite floor with her finger.

“Gentle. Kind. There weren’t too many of those people back in the academy,” she said. “I was just a kid. I thought he wasn’t trained properly. He wasn’t… _hard_ enough. The higher-ups thought so too. He was often punished for being too soft on us.” She glanced at Steve, trying to meet his eyes. “So, pretty much the same guy you grew up with, too.” Steve’s eyes stayed on the floor. “Just a little more fucked up.”

The corners of Steve’s lips unexpectedly curled up, very slightly. “I never… I knew Bucky was popular amongst the ladies but I could never picture him being in love.”

Natasha shrugged, blinking back tears. “Yeah. Well.” She was grateful now that Steve wasn’t looking at her. “Lucky me.”

**

“What do we have here?” Natasha mused, leaning against the door frame.

Bucky was in the laundry room, which was semi-flooded with bubbles. “It’s a mess. Fucking bubbles just kept _breeding_ ,” he said.

Natasha spotted the hamper next to him, still filled to the brim with clothes. “Did you put in the laundry yet?”

He looked confused. “Shouldn’t I start with the detergent first?”

Natasha laughed. “Move.” She started transferring the clothes into the machine, whites first. “Wait till Sam gets a load of this,” she said, and began the first load. “Pun not intended.”

“In my defense, I’ve seen washing machines in homes of people I had to kill but I’ve never had to actually _use_ one of these things before,” Bucky tutted.

The washing machine hummed and groaned, their clothes spinning wildly inside. You would think that SHIELD Headquarters would have each one of Stark’s latest appliance. Natasha paused. Maybe Tony just wasn’t interested in innovating a washing machine.

“What do we do?” Bucky asked, peering at the machine over her shoulder, almost like he was afraid of it.

Natasha flipped her hand in an ‘oh well’ gesture. “We wait,” she said.

Bucky curled his bottom lip. “I hate wasting time.”

“Life is not always fast bikes and machine guns.”

“It’s always been for me.”

He moved towards her at the same time she clasped her hands behind his neck, like this was a routine they had been dancing forever. It was. He didn’t remember but muscle memory was a powerful thing.

Natasha tugged on his lower lip with her teeth, batting her eyelashes against his cheekbone. He lifted her and placed her on the washing machine. “Finally figured out how to use this thing, have you?” she asked, nonchalantly kicking off her panties and leather pants.

Bucky unbuckled his belt and let his underwear and jeans slide down to his ankles. “God,” he said into her mouth, both of them jolting from the washing machine’s clumsy vibration. “I feel like we’re in a cheap porn movie.”

“You remember watching porn?” Natasha asked his left nipple, tossing his shirt away and guiding his hips with her hands in one motion.

“It’s not,” Bucky said, voice starting to strain, “a memory. It’s knowledge.”

Natasha hummed musically, hooking her ankles behind his back. She felt the length of him slide into her, making her feel whole and complete, at least for the time being.

Bucky kissed her neck as she panted, scratching claws down his back. He took her top off with shaking hands – both flesh and metal – and braced his arms on the wall behind her, bones, muscles and flesh sliding against her skin amongst the bubbles. He was mostly just bones and muscles now.

Natasha didn’t know how long they spent in the laundry room – time moved differently when you were on a different plane – but once she felt the tightening deep in her belly, she snapped her eyes open and cupped his jaw, crashing his lips against hers as she came, her entire body pulsating. Bucky came with her, accompanied by a low groan, eyes remain locked with one another. He sagged against her, neck pliant against her shoulder, breathing heavy.

Their laundry was done.

Natasha carded her fingers through his hair as they rode out the waves. Without meaning to, she whispered, “I love you” into the shell of his ear.

Bucky lifted his head and locked eyes with her again.

The hollowness crashed into her almost as hard as the pleasure she just had, taking everything away and maybe even more. His metal thumb brushed away a tear Natasha didn’t realize was slipping down her cheek. He kissed her ever so gently on the lips. A consolation prize.

Natasha kissed him back, her body pressed flush against his, feeling his heart beating against the emptiness in his chest. She caught the tears in the hollows of his cheeks with the tip of her tongue, tasting the salt.

His nose started bleeding.

She tasted his blood, too, when it ran into his mouth. It tasted like metal, and rust. All the things he was mostly known for. It broke her heart.

His blood smeared as she trailed kisses down his neck and onto his chest, and onto her as well as he did the same.

Natasha was used to wearing Bucky’s blood on her skin.


	15. Renegade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We have to stop thinking of him as an ally,” Sam reasoned softly.
> 
> “He’s not an enemy.”
> 
> “We can’t be sure,” Sam said. “This isn’t…this isn’t what America needs, Cap.”

It was 2:47 in the morning and Natasha was in bed with a ghost wearing the face of the love of her life.

For as long as she had known him, Bucky had never slept through the night. He would toss and turn, gritting his teeth, and wake up crying or hyperventilating or both.

Sometimes, like tonight, he stumbled out of bed in the darkness and dashed straight into the bathroom.

This was good. If the nightmares were back, the remorse was back. And if the remorse was back, then James really was on his way back. Maybe.

She turned on the light and found him hunched over the toilet, retching and spitting out bile, his flesh knuckles white around the porcelain. She folded herself next to him, rubbing circles over the ridges of his spine and holding his hair out of the way.

Bucky flushed the toilet with his shaking flesh hand, gasping. His face was red and tears were running down his panting cheeks. He stared blankly through the bathroom walls.

“Let’s get you back into bed,” Natasha whispered softly, unsticking the hair from his forehead. He didn’t seem to be running a fever this time. “I’ll help you.”

“No,” Bucky rasped, flinching away from her. “You’re losing respect for me, Natalia.”

Natasha’s breath hitched in her throat. “What did you just call me?”

Bucky’s red rimmed eyes stared blankly at her, looking tired as all hell. He leaned over again and dry-heaved but nothing came out.

“Who are you trying to be?”

Bucky got up to his feet, swaying. “Nobody.” He headed for the door.

Natasha stayed where she was. “James.”

Bucky whipped back around so fast Natasha almost expected him to fall over. “ _I said don’t call me that_ ,” he growled. He dropped down onto his knees so hard it must have hurt, but his face showed nothing but contempt. Towards her.

Natasha balled her fists.

He leaned so close to her their noses were almost touching. “I don’t know who the _fuck_ he is and I would rather it stay that way.”

“You’re lying. You have his memories.”

“I have his _baggage_.”

“You remember me,” Natasha challenged him, pressing even closer into his face.

They both stayed that way, until Bucky backed down.

“I remember you,” he admitted, voice suddenly gentle. Not gentle, maybe – just exhausted. He stood up, much shakier than before. He walked out of the bathroom, moving slow. “Doesn’t mean I feel shit.”

**

Natasha curled in on herself as tight as her body would go, like if she could make herself small enough, she would disappear. Her sobs were tearing through her chest. The cold bathroom tiles were no match against what she felt inside, and how Bucky’s voice had sounded.

She crawled on hands and knees, sobbing so hard her body trembled and blindly climbed into the tub, like maybe the secure, small space would help contain her exploding psyche – maybe that was why Bucky missed his cryo tank so much – but nothing was that easy, was it?

Her cries echoed off the walls and the porcelain, magnifying her pain.

So she sat back up and huddled into another corner of the bathroom, like if she kept moving, maybe she wouldn’t be swallowed whole. She was crying so hard she felt like she was going to throw up, so she stood up and rushed to the toilet, barely able to see through the torrents of tears blurring her vision.

The sobs wracked through her body relentlessly, so much that she found herself squatting on the floor, her head in her hands. Sobbing, crying, _howling_.

The next thing she knew, she was finally drained out, just sitting with her legs sprawled out, breaths still hitching. She lost track of time, the numbness tacked on like a struggling band aid on the surface.

Calmly, she rearranged her legs under her, still shaking with leftover sobs, and stepped out of the bathroom, flipping off the glaring fluorescent light.

The room was still shrouded in darkness. She was about to lay her heavy body down and maybe sleep for the rest of her life, when she saw Bucky sitting on the floor with his head tilted up against the wall and knees pressing into his chest.

“I didn’t say all that just to hurt you,” he mumbled.

“I know you didn’t.”

When it was clear that he wasn’t going to respond – it was dark but Natasha could see he wasn’t even _blinking_ – she turned away and got into bed, leaving him there.

**

Natasha tossed and turned, the way his voice sounded when he called her Natalia haunting her as she waded in and out of sleep. When she finally couldn’t take it anymore, she sat up.

She was alone.

As it turned out, Steve had flown to meet Fury in Colorado alone. She found Sam in the dark, watching a summer blockbuster from the year before.

She plopped down next to him uninvited. Sam silently offered her a bowl of chips. She grabbed a piece between her fingers.

“Tough day?” Sam asked, eyes glued onto the screen.

“Do you think it’s worse to lose someone all at once, or watch them slowly fade away right in front of you?”

“I think you’ve had a taste of both,” Sam said softly, “with the same person.”

Natasha watched the TV with a blank stare. A robot was annihilating the entire city. A car shifted into another robot, as civilians screamed and scrambled away in a hundred different directions.

“Everything has finally come to this, and it’s meaningless.”

Sam sat still for a moment before putting the bowl of chips onto the coffee table.

“What is the whole fucking point?” Natasha wept.

“The point is, you fought for him.” It only made Natasha sob harder, her fingers digging into the upholstery. “The way he fought for you. I know he did. He just doesn’t remember.”

Sam pulled Natasha close against his side, letting her cry into his chest.

The robots on the screen continued fighting. Natasha heard broken glass, explosions, metal grating on metal. It could have very well been a footage of the Avengers fighting aliens or something.

When she was done soaking Sam’s shirt with her tears, Natasha let her gaze fall back onto the screen, not that anyone was watching it anymore.

“May I join you?” Bucky asked.

“Sure,” Sam said, the surprise not completely hidden in his voice.

Bucky settled in on Sam’s opposite side, his metal arm glinting from the TV. They both stared quietly at each other – Natasha with puffy eyes; Bucky with tired eyes.

“Can’t sleep either?” Sam asked.

Bucky tore his eyes away from Natasha to make eye-contact with Sam. “Tired to the bone, but no go,” he said, smiling easily.

Just like Natasha, he wore his masks well. But after a while, it gets exhausting for everyone involved.

Natasha took a walk around the recesses of her mind, feeling numb and empty. The next thing she knew, the credits started rolling. She didn’t even know which side won.

“Who died? I wasn’t paying attention.”

“No one,” Bucky responded, the heaviness of their previous exchange hanging stiffly in the air. Natasha wondered if Sam was suffocating on it. “But the uh, team with the yellow one seems to be the hero.”

“What happened to everyone else?”

Bucky shrugged. “Pawns.”

Sam fumbled for the remote. “Doesn’t matter whose side you’re on. We’re all just pawns in someone else’s fantasy.”

**

Bucky gently pried Natasha’s palm open and placed a knife in it.

“Kill me,” he said, closing her fingers over the handle. “Show me what I taught you.”

Natasha left the knife in her hand and left her hand in his. “You don’t get to die on me. It’s not fair.”

Bucky licked his lips. “After everything I’ve done, it’s only fair.”

Natasha blinked tiredly. She pulled her hand away, slowly. “I have no time for this.” She turned around.

“You’re weak.”

She faced him again. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“When the time comes,” he said, “you need to be strong enough to finish what Hydra started.”

Natasha gripped the handle so hard her hand was shaking. “I’m stronger than you think.” She hurled the knife onto the floor. It clattered noisily. “And so are you.”

She turned on her heels, fire running through her veins.

**

Natasha sat on the couch, wearing the t-shirt and shorts she had worn to bed the night before. Not that she slept. She hadn’t slept in days.

Sam sat on the chair adjacent from her. Steve stood at the fringe of the living room, like he was afraid something would catch on him.

Bucky sat across from her, head in his mismatched hands.

“I’m not insane,” he said through his fingers.

“You’re not,” Sam said softly. “You’re just sick.”

**

“The suicide cases have spread,” Steve announced.

“They’re back,” Natasha said. Her stomach lurched, her feet going cold.

She peeked at Bucky from the corner of her eye, and found that he was already doing the same.

Steve set up a hologram and clicked through mugshots of all the victims. “Reports say that the victims acted like they were in a trance.”

“Like a Lovecraftian horror movie,” Sam said.

Steve’s eyebrows knitted. “What’s that?”

Sam waved him off.

“Anyway, it’s been happening at random. All over the country.”

“They’re recruiting soldiers,” Bucky said solemnly.

Steve nodded. “Fury knew this would happen. That’s why he put us up here instead.”

“Until Ross finds out that the Winter Soldier is within the SHIELD compound,” Bucky murmured.

“This isn’t your doing. He can’t pin this on you. Neither can Fury.”

“But we’re sure it’s the cult?” Natasha insisted.

“No motive. No history of mental illness or depression. And all of them have gone through a near-death experience.”

Sam straightened up. “That’s new.”

“They’ve upped the requirements,” Natasha observed. “People who have already been touched by the other side.”

“The ones who died before were just a warning,” Steve agreed.

“Then what do we do?”

Steve pressed his fingertips into his forehead. “Something…something has got to give.”

“I’ll go on and knock on heaven’s door,” Bucky volunteered. “Figure out a deal.”

“ _You’ve_ been catching up on your pop culture references,” Sam said flatly.

Steve shook his head. “That’s not what I meant, Buck.”

“Yeah? Anyone’s got a better plan?” Everyone stayed silent. “I didn’t think so.”

“What’s your motive?” Natasha said quietly.

Bucky stared at her. “I’m sorry?”

“Natasha,” Steve chastised.

“You said it yourself, Steve,” Natasha said slowly.

“I said what?” Steve said, tone clipped.

Natasha eyed Bucky. “We’re not really sure whose side you’re on, James.”

From a standing position, Steve bent over himself and laid his palms down onto the table, head bowed helplessly.

Bucky looked genuinely hurt. He leaned back into his seat, putting distance between himself and everyone else at the table. “Right,” he said softly. He got up. His nose was starting to bleed again.

“Buck. Buck, where are you going?” Steve asked.

“I don’t feel well.” He staunched the blood with his sleeve and punched a button for the elevator with the other hand. The doors parted and he disappeared inside.

“What was that for?” Steve nearly yelled at Natasha.

“I was taught to hit where it hurts the most,” she replied flatly.

“Yeah, and you were also trained to handle situations professionally,” Steve spat.

“I’m sick of all this, Steve,” Natasha sighed. “I don’t know who we’re dealing with here – the person who was sitting at this table.”

Sam’s voice was calm. “You’re doubting him.”

“ _Yes_ , Sam,” Natasha snapped. “I always have. Are you happy?”

Whatever Sam wanted to say, he seemed to be biting it back.

“Natasha, you’re acting like a child here.”

“We can’t all go on pretending. Either he breaks first or we do, and I would really prefer the latter.”

“Fine. Say he breaks first. What would he do?” Steve said. “Theoretically.”

“Give up and give in.”

Steve rubbed his brow, breathing slowly.

“If he’s going to be swaying back and forth, we need him out of the equation. It’s the only way to protect him.”

“What you’ve done is drive him to the wolves,” Sam said patiently.

“Unless he wants to prove his loyalty,” Natasha insisted, “this is as good a time as any.”

“You’re seriously leaving this up to chance?” Steve said incredulously.

Natasha shot him a look. “Who’s doubting him now?”

Steve had never looked so livid before.

“Alright, alright,” Sam said, holding his palms up. “So here’s what we got. At worst, he’s a threat.” He held a finger up when Steve was about to interrupt. “At best, he’s a distraction.”

Steve’s knuckles were white around the edge of the table. “Then what do you suggest?” he asked begrudgingly.

“We have to stop thinking of him as an ally,” Sam reasoned softly.

“He’s not an enemy.”

“We can’t be sure,” Sam said. “This isn’t…this isn’t what America needs, Cap.”

Steve stayed quiet for a few seconds too long. “If you want no part in this, Sam, I won’t force you.” The tenderness in his voice felt out of place. He glanced at Natasha and back to Sam. “I can do this on my own.”

Sam looked taken aback. Natasha could relate. “Don’t be like that, man.”

She watched Steve abruptly pull out a chair and sat himself down, leaning his forehead into his interlaced fingers.

“Cap.”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Steve whispered. He took a steadying breath. “I’ve been asking too much of you right from the beginning. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve been acting like we weren’t already friends before Bucky came back.”

Sam’s body curved in a way that made it seem like he was deflecting whatever Steve was saying. “Don’t say that.”

Steve straightened up. “I’m letting you go, Sam.”

“Steve…” Natasha said. Sam just stared at him.

“Captain’s orders,” Steve added. That was a card Natasha knew Sam couldn’t refuse.

“Cap, with all due respect—“

“This hole keeps getting deeper and I’m not gambling your life away.”

Sam stared at Steve for the longest time. “You’re not protecting me. You’re underestimating me.”

Steve look so torn that Natasha had to turn away.

“But,” Sam said softly, nodding his head, “orders are orders.” He stood up. “It was a pleasure serving you, Captain.” He nodded at Natasha. “Miss Romanoff.”

Both Natasha and Steve watched quietly as Sam exited the room like Bucky did, so uneventful for such a monumental shift.

“Steve, do you even know what you’re doing?”

“I can’t ask this of him,” Steve said.

“You know he’s committed.”

“Level with me, Nat,” Steve sighed. “What if Bucky messes with his wings, too?”

The heat of anger bubbling in Natasha’s guts, threatening to spill between her lips. “You had me bugged?”

“I didn’t,” Steve said. “It was the bike. He must have accidentally left the recording controls on when he took it out of the garage.”

“He is not capable of accidents,” Natasha said, her tone reflecting the storm raging inside her.

Steve nodded calmly. He knew that, too. “Then he wanted me to know.”

Natasha’s brain worked double-time processing this. Bucky really wanted to die. Whether or not she found him, the recording was going to be his suicide note.

“How…how long have you known?”

“Few days after his accident. Before we moved back here.” Steve leaned back heavily into his seat. “Sam can’t ever know.”

“This is like Tony all over again.” Natasha felt so, so tired.

“Too many people want Bucky dead already.” The seconds melted away with the silence, until Steve spoke again. “This war… It’s bigger than us.”

And the war hadn’t even begun yet Steve already looked defeated. “If you’re in this, I need you to understand that we might not make it out alive.”

Natasha knew. She had known for a while. “Then I’ll just have to see you again on the other side.”


	16. Soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “If Pierce is dead…” Bucky rasped, swimming in and out of consciousness. The end of his sentence was swallowed by another gasp.
> 
> “We’ll find out,” Sam assured him.

On some level, Natasha had always known.

They had never fought against something of this magnitude before. It was the unseen that was usually harder to beat.

Because you never see them coming.

And another thing Natasha never saw coming? Fucking Hydra barging in on this day, out of all days.

“Breach,” the operator announced over the blaring alarms.

A Hydra ship blasted itself through the bullet-proof glass of SHIELD’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Natasha ducked behind a couch for cover as the glass rained down. She didn’t see where Steve went. Five, maybe six Hydras filed out of the jet.

She leaped across the bar to grab a gun they had hidden there but a Hydra agent beat her to it.

Adrenaline coursing through her veins, Natasha kicked him in the jaw hard enough to hear his spine crack and climbed up onto his back as he passed out to transfer his firearms onto her own person before rolling across the hall in one swift, continuous movement.

The agent fell into an undignified heap as Natasha fired endlessly at the new agents coming out from the jet.

Steve’s shield came flying through the air, decapitating two of them and severely injuring another three.

“How did you get in here?” Steve grunted as he engaged in hand-to-hand combat with another assailant, who blacked out from a hard punch to the heart before he could answer. Natasha shot the remaining agents in the room while dodging some herself.

“Seriously,” Steve panted, picking up his shield. He wiped the blood off with the bottom of his t-shirt. “How’d they get access?”

When you had been trained – groomed – to be a spy your whole life, and given enhanced senses, you would be able to detect the slightest hint of movement coming up behind you. Especially if it was someone you had known almost all your life.

“What did you do?” Natasha demanded through bleary eyes and gritted teeth.

“I – I didn’t do anything, I swear,” Bucky said.

Natasha wordlessly aimed the gun at Bucky’s face.

“Where’s Sam?” Steve asked, so scared and so, so sad.

“I don’t know,” Bucky answered.

“How did they find you?” Her vision blurred as tears burned her eyes.

Bucky’s eyes were begging her to believe him. “I _don’t_. _Know_.”

“Come up with something better than that.”

More Hydra agents flooded the floor. Steve grabbed Natasha’s hand and spun her closer to him so they could take cover behind his shield. Apparently, the shield was also deflecting the bullets directly back to the assailants, knocking them dead effectively. Vibranium tech.

Natasha shot an agent behind Steve while Steve simultaneously reached his hand out around her to knock out another one.

Bucky was attacking the agents with his bare hands like a beast. There was no rhythm to his attacks – visceral and just pure rage. Clumsy, even.

Natasha narrowly missed a bullet by leaping out of the way, grabbing another agent in headlock and shooting him in the temple, aligning her aim perfectly so the same bullet hit another one a few steps away who was shooting at Bucky. She could hear the sounds of bullets raining off of Steve’s shield.

As she was busy dancing a dangerous routine with yet another one, her lips caught the elbow of another agent. She shot them both at once – one gun in each hand – and spat blood into the face of the latter.

Steve, with a bruise on his cheekbone, ducked his way around an assailant, coming up close right in front of his nose, diverted the aim of the agent’s gun so he shot at the ceiling before head-butting his nose into his brain. Bucky, who seemed to be attracting the most attention, was trapped in a headlock.

Natasha was too far. Steve cleared the agents who were holding Bucky’s metal arm down by slamming his shield in one clean sweep around them. Bucky took care of the rest himself, punching one in the throat and sending another careening straight into the wall so hard they heard his skull crack.

A bullet grazed Natasha’s thigh. It was the same leg that she got shot in about two months ago. Pissed off, she shot him in the balls.

While they were putting up a good fight, it was quickly becoming clear that they were outnumbered.

“They just keep on comin’!” Steve muttered, slamming two Hydra agents against each other in the head.

On cue, Sam flew in through the gaping window with his wings. “Someone broke the windows just for me?”

Natasha quirked a smile. “Shut up and get to work!”

Before things could start going smoothly, it happened really quickly.

Bucky’s coughing caught Natasha’s ears first before his body collapsing onto its knees caught her eye. The first bullet narrowly missed him, leaving a graze on his flesh shoulder. The second bullet embedded itself in his chest.

“Bucky!” Steve screamed.

Bucky was shaking from the pain, struggling to remain on his hands and knees, eyes wide and jaw clenched tight.

“You’re coming with us, soldier,” a voice said. “You are our creation. We bear the responsibility to end you.”

Sam fired rounds and rounds of bullets into the agents, covering for Steve as he leapt towards Bucky’s aid.

Natasha spied more Hydra jets coming their way. She raced to the safe, taking out another agent on the way with a roundhouse kick, and punched in the code to the safe. She grabbed two bombs.

“Steve!” she shouted, tossing them towards him.

Steve caught both easily with one hand while the other staunched one of Bucky’s wound. Bucky’s scream ended in a desperate gasp for air. Nearest to the window, Steve threw the bombs into the air.

The explosion brought debris and glass raining down on them. Natasha ducked behind a wall. She believed Sam had his wings, and Steve had his shield to cover himself and Bucky.

Under her feet, she felt the tremor from the bombs and the jets crashing into the ground.

“I wouldn’t have done that if I were you,” said the same voice, crackling with static from the building. Natasha realized it was Zola.

She crept out from behind the wall.

“I was doing you a favor,” Zola’s voice said.

“Fuck you,” Bucky wheezed breathlessly, face ashen and veins standing in sharp relief in his neck. He coughed up blood.

“I missed you, Sergeant Barnes.”

Another strangled gasp escaped Bucky’s blue lips. Beads of sweat were running down his temples.

“You must allow us to finish him our way,” Zola said, “to save the world from worse horrors yet to come.”

Things must be really fucked up for them to find themselves somewhat on the same side with Hydra.

“There has to be another way,” Steve said.

“Is there, Captain?”

“What do you care anyway? You’re dead,” Steve said distractedly, ripping Bucky’s shirt to see his injuries. Just like Bucky, the blood drained from his face.

“What would be the point of my life’s work if the rest of the world is, too?”

Another bomb exploded, but it wasn’t theirs. Once again, Natasha felt the tremor under her feet. More assailants flew in through the window, barely visible through the smoke and debris.

Sam took off, shooting down on the jets from outside.

The building quaked again. Natasha smelled something burning.

“Nat!” Steve shouted. “Can you take it from here?”

“Go!” Natasha yelled back.

“I’ll be right back, buddy,” Steve whispered to Bucky, voice trembling, pushing his dark, wet hair gently away from his face. Bucky’s half-lidded eyes followed Steve. Steve picked up his shield and disappeared from the room.

Natasha gunned down two more agents. She kicked a gun out of an agent’s hand in vengeance, intending to smash his head in with the barrel but made do with an elbow instead.

She heard Bucky weakly gasping for air. Natasha kept an eye on him as she tackled the rest of the agents, watching as he slowly crawled across the floor to get to his gun. Eyes still open, he stopped moving and fell as silent as he fell still, blood dribbling from his open mouth.

Natasha felt her heart stop.

“ _James_!” she cried. At the same time, a rush of blood to her head threatened to pull her towards the floor. She was one of the most competent spies around, but she was doomed to be compromised by her emotions. As a result, the same Hydra agent managed to grab the ends of her hair and pull her into a headlock.

It seemed to remind Bucky that he was still alive.

His half-opened eyes darted towards Natasha, giving him strength for one last push to stretch out for his gun and fired in Natasha’s direction. She felt a burst of warm red liquid on the top of her head, and then she was freed.

Bucky had shot the agent through his brain.

Before she could tend to him, she took care of three more agents. In the back of her mind, she kept an ear out to make sure she could still hear Sam’s wings flapping in the air.

Once the coast was clear with Sam gatekeeping the window, Natasha rushed over to Bucky.

“Did Steve get the bullet out?” she panted.

‘He couldn’t,” Bucky said, breathing through clenched teeth. “It’s in – my lung.” This close, Natasha noticed his lips were turning blue. Bucky gasped deep, veins protruding in his sweat-beaded neck, trying to get air. 

“Breathe,” Natasha begged. “Breathe for me.”

He held her eyes with his own, air wheezing in his chest, fighting just to breathe. A drop of sweat trickled slowly down his jaw. His chest rose higher and dropped lower, overcompensating.

A jet managed to slip through Sam. She gunned them down, remaining by Bucky’s side.

She shot one last Hydra in the kidney and watched as he crumbled onto the floor. “If Pierce is dead, who’s calling the shots?” she barked at him.

“I don’t – know,” he grunted. Natasha fired a bullet into his thigh. He screamed.

“Now do you have answers?”

“I – I w-was just foll—following orders,” he gasped.

Natasha fired another round to his head.

“Who’s to say – he was lying,” Bucky said breathlessly. His eyes were closing. Blood bubbled out of his mouth as he spoke.

“I don’t trust anything anybody says,” Natasha said, firing more jets. Her hands were too busy to help Bucky. There were too many of them for Sam to gate keep. “Sam! You okay?” she shouted.

“For now!” Sam called back.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Bucky’s fingers desperately scrambling for a rod from the debris. He stabbed it between his own ribs, releasing the air pressure so his lung could breathe for him again. He gasped so hard that his shoulders lifted.

“That was the last of it,” Sam said, flying back into the room.

“NAOMI,” Natasha called. These AIs had the dumbest names. “Alert the medical wing.”

“Medical wing alerted,” NAOMI reported.

Sam helped Bucky sit up against the wall.

“If Pierce is dead…” Bucky rasped, swimming in and out of consciousness. The end of his sentence was swallowed by another gasp.

“We’ll find out,” Sam assured him, voice dropping low and tender.

Steve burst into the room, panting. He fell onto his hands and knees, hands bracketing Bucky’s pale face. “Stay with me.”

Bucky could do no more than blink the kind of blinks that were too slow to be considered blinks.

“I am sorry to inform you that the medical wing is under strict orders not to intervene,” NAOMI reported apologetically.

“What the fuck?” Natasha heard Sam said under his breath, as Steve yelled, “WHOSE ORDERS?”

“General Ross, Captain.”

The anger was evident all over Steve’s face.

“He has also locked the entire medical wing, sir. No one can go in, and no one can come out.”

Natasha clenched her jaw so hard her own teeth might break.

“I’ll – I’ll get the medical kit.” Sam scrambled to his feet and dashed off.

“Let me guess,” Steve sneered, “every single hospital in the country is barred from accepting patients with metal arms?”

“Unfortunately, yes, sir.”

Steve yelled in frustration, slamming his shield into the wall, leaving a huge crack that ran all the way towards the ceiling.

“Discrimination,” Bucky wheezed. “Welcome…to fucking Am—merica.”

Steve stared at Bucky like he couldn’t believe he was making jokes. “You enjoyed your time in Russia better?”

“Keep your eyes open, James,” Natasha said, holding his blood-covered flesh hand. “Look at me. Look at me.” Bucky did. Natasha thought she could see the man she loved again in the blues of his eyes.

Sam dropped down next to her, hastily unpacking the medical kit. When Natasha turned to Bucky, his eyes had closed.

“No, no,” she said, jostling him. Bucky gasped awake, the pain looking like it was blinding him. There was a sick gurgling sound in his throat. Natasha tipped him to the side and blood spilled out from between his lips.

Sam wasted no time prodding Bucky’s stuttering chest. “Judging from the location of the wound, bullet’s too close to the heart,” he observed.

“Get it,” Bucky panted breathlessly, “get it…out.”

“Oh,” Sam sighed, a noise that was equally nervous and sympathetic. He wrapped his arms around Bucky, holding him with his eyes shut tight, before immediately getting to work, doing what he could with what little resources he had. Bucky screamed through gritted teeth when Sam poured alcohol over his wounds. Natasha held his hand a little tighter.

“This will all be over soon, man. I promise,” Sam said, digging around Bucky’s chest with a pair of tweezers. Steve hissed, before turning away. Bucky tried to keep as still as possible, but the pain made him twitch every now and then. Breathless gasps squeaked down his throat. Rivers of sweat ran into his eyes. He didn’t have air to scream anymore.

His metal hand clawed into the floor as Sam worked on getting out the bullet from his lung. Sam was sweating bullets himself. Bucky promptly passed out in Natasha’s arms once it exited his chest, metal fingers still gouged into the concrete.

Natasha had to admit that she was relieved. His head lolled against her shoulder. She hoped he wouldn’t feel anything now, but his eyelids fluttered again after a while, as Sam worked on stitching him back together. His metal hands scraped the polished floor, barely awake.

“He still needs medical attention or infection will start spreading soon. The serum will have to fix everything else,” Sam said, wiping his brow with his wrist. He snipped off the last thread.

“We were wrong about you,” Natasha said quietly.

“We were wrong about a lot of things,” Steve agreed.

“Send me a card,” Sam said wryly.

Steve looked at Sam. “Thank you, Sam.”

Sam nodded, wiping Bucky’s wounds down with alcohol one more time for good measure. Bucky’s body jerked like he was electrocuted. A strangled grunt wrestled its way out of his throat.

“And for coming back, when I told you not to.” Steve gently wiped away the sweat on Bucky’s face.

Sam smiled. “Not getting into trouble for going against orders, am I?”

A huge laser beam cutting through the walls interrupted Steve from replying.

“I apologize, Captain, but you and your friends leave me with no choice.”

Holding onto Bucky, Natasha inched her way to the huge broken window, the wind billowing her curls. There was a flying ship with huge cannons firing lasers their way. This was almost as bizarre as the robo-aliens they battled years ago.

“Always had a dramatic flair, Zola,” Natasha quipped.

“I would like to politely request you hand me back my soldier,” Zola said.

“He’s not your fucking property,” Steve said, stepping forward with his teeth bared.

Bucky was awake, but had lost too much air to take part in the conversation. It looked like it hurt him to breathe.

The canon made a humming charging sound, and Steve was engulfed in the blinding light of the laser beam, folding himself completely to fit behind his shield. The beam was so strong that Natasha saw Steve being pushed backwards by the force of it, inches by inches.

Sam flew with his back facing the ship, reflecting the heat of the minor blasts back to them until they stopped firing back.

Bucky coughed wetly, and a stream of blood bubbled in the corner of his lips.

She glanced back at Steve just in time to see the aim shifting away from him at a fraction of an angle. Sam had probably managed to knock the canon askew. Now they were firing at him.

Steve began racing towards Bucky.

“I’ll be right back,” Natasha whispered urgently, gently sliding Bucky back against the wall. He moaned, weakly reaching for her hand with his trembling flesh one. He couldn’t even open his eyes.

Natasha kissed his bloody palm. Sam needed her.

“Sam, I need a ride!” she shouted. Swooping between the bullets, Sam circled back close enough to the ledge to grab Natasha when she jumped out. He dropped her off on the dock, where several agents were hiding behind screens, firing the other weapons like they were in a video game. Unlike the previous agents, these were decked out in full-body armors.

Natasha kicked one of them hard enough to knock his balance off the ship, but another one grabbed her by hair, forcing her head back and exposing her neck. Natasha grabbed his wrist, keeping him from slitting her throat. Leveraging on the force of his hand pulling on her curls, Natasha used her own weight by swinging her legs upwards, using her grip on his wrists as the fulcrum. The shift in resistance caused the man to accidentally stab himself right through his Kevlar with his own blade.

“I’ll take that, thank you,” Natasha muttered, grabbing his knife and wiping his blood on his torso. She finally got them off Sam’s back.

But when she glanced back at the building, she realized Steve was missing.

Bucky was exposed, and alone.

Dead pilots left the ship reeling. Natasha lost her footing and fell off.

She managed to hang onto the wing of the ship, but couldn’t find purchase to boost herself up. Only then she noticed that Steve was in the other corner of the landing, grappling with three agents at once. He looked like he had been shot.

“Sam! A little help,” Natasha called. But Sam too far away to hear her, busy gliding through the air between loud laser beams and bombs. 

She noticed two Hydra agents stalking towards Bucky.

“James!” Natasha screamed. “Get up!”

Bucky had fought so hard his body had nothing left to give.

“ _Run_!” Natasha begged desperately.

Bucky could only stare at her through his eyelashes. She wasn’t even sure if he heard her.

The ship was flying closer to the ledge, so Natasha let go.

She landed on the balls of her feet. More agents were coming up, eyes on her, blocking her path to Bucky. She took on as many of them as she could but someone managed to hit her in her temples. She saw stars, and when she opened her eyes again, she was alone.

From the ledge, Natasha crept to the edge of the window through her dizziness to see that Steve was down, too. And all that was left of Bucky was his pool of blood.

Taking advantage of her disorientation, another agent kicked her off the ledge. Natasha screamed as she fell.

Sam caught her by the waist halfway down below, her feet jerking in the air. A loud sound caused ringing in her ears, and she realized the hit had damaged Sam’s wings. He deposited her onto the nearest floor and fell a few feet below onto a pile of rubble before he could safely land.

“Sam?” Natasha breathed, trying to quell her panic.

“Go!” he groaned.

She ran up the stairs all the way, keeping an eye on the ship at every floor. The distance was too far for her to jump back on, and the ship was moving further and further away.

 _No. No, no, no._ Her heart was beating wildly in her chest _. Not again._

She was trained to know the difference between giving up and cutting her losses. There was nothing she could do now. She had to accept that, even as a wave of nausea swept over her at that very thought.

She continued running up to Steve instead, hoping against hope that he was okay. “Steve?” Steve was lying on the floor, his limbs sprawled out. There was a gaping bullet hole in his palm. His hair was less blond and more matted red. “Steve, wake up. Steve.”

Steve jerked awake, gulping down air. Blood was seeping out of a gash in his forehead. He looked at Natasha. “Where’s – where’s Bucky?”

Natasha could only try not to cry.


	17. Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve slid the shield behind his back, eyes on Sam.
> 
> Sam had his eyes on Steve, too, but his were clouded by betrayal.

Bucky felt like he was drowning. No air in his lungs. His entire body throbbed with the need for oxygen.

He didn’t even recognize the cold, at first, until it ate its way through his skin and straight into his bones.

And then, he didn’t recognize anything anymore.

The Asset welcomed the relief.

**

A flicker, and Ross’ hologram was standing there. Natasha stood up, wanting nothing more than to hit him across the face.

“I understand you’re angry, Captain, but I hold the powers here. Not the kind you have. The legal kind.”

“You’re lucky you’re not physically here,” Natasha said. “I do have knives sharper than my tongue.”

“With every word that comes out of your mouth,” Ross raised his voice, “all three of you are getting further away from an international pardon.”

“You want to talk about how much the government owes Bucky for being a prisoner of war for seventy years, and losing an arm at that?” Sam glowered.

Ross tilted his head back, looking at Sam down his nose. “Is that a threat, Mr. Wilson?”

“Why? You feel threatened?” Sam challenged him.

“With the trouble he’s been causing, I think we’re even,” Ross said.

“General,” Steve interjected, taking over the reins, “you don’t understand the magnitude of the danger at hand here.”

“The danger comes from the assassin you’ve been harboring. We have no space for that level of threat running freely—”

“If you let him die, celestials from another dimension are going to weaponize him to a greater degree. The world will crumble. And I will not let that happen.”

Ross seemed amused. “How do I know you’re not just saying this just to save your friend?”

“You will when the real war begins.”

**

The Quinjet raced against time. All Natasha could think about was Bucky.

Sam strapped on the new wings Ross sent him and popped open the hatch. His left ear was still bleeding from the bombs. “I’ll check if the coast is clear.” He jumped.

“I don’t think he’s here, Steve. It’s too obvious.”

Steve shifted the gear on the Quinjet, hovering, waiting for Sam to report. “It’s the only lead we’ve got.” He turned around to look at her. “They won’t let him die, Nat. They’re fixing him.”

“And then they’ll take him back. They’ll keep him.”

“To keep him, they need the tank. They don’t have too many of those lying around.”

Sam’s voice came on the comm. “No one’s home.”

Steve clenched his fists in frustration, even the injured one. Blood started seeping through the bandages.

Natasha gently laid her hand on it. “We had another home,” she said quietly.

**

“Madame B!” Natasha shouted, running down the abandoned hallways. Her own desperation echoed back at her, empty and magnified.

“Two visits in a week. I taught you to be stronger than this, Natalia.”

Natasha turned around. “Where is he?”

Madame B stood before her. She looked old. Lonely. But as proud and powerful as ever.

“I always knew he would be the death of you,” she said softly.

Natasha marched right up to her so they were nose to nose. She wasn’t a child anymore. They were equals now. “Where. Is he?”

Madame B tucked Natasha’s hair behind her ear, gently. “Love is for children,” she said. “I thought you were stronger than this.”

Tears welled up in Natasha’s eyes, blurring her vision. “You wouldn’t accept him a week ago. Why now?”

“You dug your own grave, Natasha. I wanted you to lie in it.”

Natasha turned around.

“But you never learn,” she heard Madame B say.

“Steve. Sam.” Natasha said into her comm. “Meet me in the cellar.”

**

As a little child growing up here, Natasha was terrified of the cellar. She still was.

It was covered in dust, cobwebs in every corner.

And there it was, like it always had been: the cryotank.

Just like the figment of her nightmares once she got old enough to understand what it was and what it meant for her trainer, there was Bucky behind the frosted glass, suspended from various wires like he was nothing but a creature kept in storage for later use.

Like a fly caught in a spider web.

His eyelashes were encrusted with ice. His skin was pale white and smooth, like marble. He didn’t even look real. He looked so peaceful. So lonely.

Natasha gripped her own chest, like she could stop her heart from breaking.

Her eyes darted around for the control panel. She hit the buttons that started the thawing process. She had had her fair share of experience operating the machine, having tried to steal him away a bunch of times.

“Oh my God,” Steve breathed, brushing past Natasha straight to the cryotank.

“Don’t,” Natasha warned him. “He needs to be thawed out slowly or he’ll die.”

Steve pressed his uninjured hand on the cryotank, trying to reach Bucky through the glass. “How long will it take?”

“Couple of hours.”

Steve stared at her. They didn’t have a couple of hours.

On cue, Hydra agents flooded the scene.

Natasha and Sam pulled out their guns simultaneously.

A man stepped forth. It was Pierce.

It couldn’t be.

“Let’s take this fight somewhere else, shall we?” he said. “This is no playground to play in. Sleeping beauty there needs his beauty sleep.”

“I watched you die,” Natasha said.

Pierce smiled. “Obviously you did not. I have the best surgeons. Those same surgeons put him back together again.” He straightened his tie. “We clean up after our own mess, Miss Romanoff.” He tilted his head in Bucky’s general direction, looking dismayed and disappointed, eyes downcast. “Just one more left.”

“And Hydra?” she heard Steve ask, completely ignoring the last statement.

Pierce shrugged. “Still kicking. Under the radar.” He looked at the cryotank, finally looking at Bucky. “Oh, no. Did you thaw him out? He’s not ready to cook. Put him back on!” A Hydra agent rushed towards the control panel. “Hey,” he said to Sam and Natasha, “put your guns down. This is a civilized conversation.”

“Release him to us,” Steve demanded.

“He is under the ownership of Hydra. Always has been. With the cult planning to turn him against the entire planet, we have two choices here: keep him alive at least until he finishes his last few missions, or get rid of him our way.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Natasha snarled.

“Drain him,” Pierce said simply. “It’s his blood. The Tesseract. He’s been cursed this whole time.”

Natasha felt her mouth go dry. The words had been activated all along.

“We both need him alive. Can we come to some sort of agreement?” One glance at Steve told Natasha that it sickened him to have those words escape his lips.

“We keep him alive, yes. But who keeps him after?”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Steve tighten his grip on his shield.

“Right,” Pierce said. “Didn’t think so.”

“How about we save the fight after we eliminate those weird ass people?” Sam suggested.

Pierce cocked his head at Sam like Sam just grew a second head. “What are you still doing here?”

Sam stared back, both his and Natasha’s guns never straying from Pierce’s face. “What?”

“Either your loyalty really knows no boundaries or you haven’t found out.”

Natasha felt her throat close up. She swallowed.

“Found out what?”

“Sam…” Steve began, but Pierce kept talking.

“You’re ruining your life helping the man who killed your partner.”

Sam stood still until it sank in. Face stoic and body stiff, he turned to Steve, then Natasha, judging their similar expression. “Is it true?”

“It wasn’t him,” Steve said helplessly.

Sam stumbled backwards away from Natasha and Steve, gun lowered half-way and forgotten.

Pierce snapped his fingers twice. Hydra agents filed out, suited and armed. “Or we could fight now.”

Natasha saw it in Sam’s eyes half a second before Sam himself did.

He shot Pierce in the head.

Chaos unfolded itself the next fraction of a second.

Bullets were flying from all different directions, this way and that. Natasha could barely get a bullet out herself, focusing on staying out of the lines of fire.

She rolled across the floor and slid to the other end of the room to the control panels. Her memory was fuzzy but she remembered this place inside and out and how to mess with the security cameras. She sensed a Hydra creep up behind her and smashed his nose into his brain with the back of her head.

It was like watching Sam die and come back to life. He wasn’t fighting as a soldier – he was fighting as an avenger.

Natasha shot down three more Hydra agents, and was about to shoot a fourth when he dropped his weapon.

“I surrender. Please,” he said from behind the mask, voice trembling.

Natasha considered this. This was probably how Clint saw her many years ago.

“Go,” she said.

He stumbled away.

Natasha jumped and positioned herself horizontally in the air so she could punch a Hydra and kick another at the same time. This wasn’t like the movies where the bad guy gets hit once and stays down. These motherfuckers kept popping up like moles.

Steve’s shield flying through the air caught her sight. She watched as a Hydra deflected it and it flew right into the top of Bucky’s cryotank.

“No,” she whispered.

The lights in the cryotank flickered and went out. Natasha raced towards it and just as she reached it, Bucky’s eyes snapped open. He began shivering instantly, his conscious body undergoing shock and reacting to the ice.

Natasha climbed over the tank to the top where the shield damaged the wiring. There was nothing she could do to get it back online. The wires were damaged, sparking. She slid back down and saw that Bucky was struggling as much as he could in his half-frozen condition. That was when she realized he couldn’t breathe.

There was no air in the tank. Being in suspended animation, he didn’t need any. Except now, he did.

Natasha kicked the tank as hard as she could. It wouldn’t give. She picked up the shield and slammed into it, again and again. Behind the glass, Bucky was blue from the cold and lack of oxygen. His lips parted for breath that wouldn’t come.

Just as his eyes rolled back into his head, Steve snatched the shield from Natasha’s hands and drove it into the glass as hard as he could. It only made a slight crack. Steve pummeled it again and again. Condensed air wafted through the cracks. Bucky remained still, body glistening from the melted ice. Steve screamed, launching it one more time.

The crack gave way, the edge of the shield embedded in the glass. Steve pulled it out and Natasha kicked the rest of the glass all the way in.

Steve climbed into the tank, unhooking the wires off of Bucky. Natasha turned around and fired at more Hydra agents. Sam had been covering her and Steve’s sixes.

She barely registered Steve lowering Bucky’s body to the floor. He began compressions on him. “Breathe, Bucky, c’mon,” he said, on the verge of crying. Bucky’s drenched body moved bonelessly under Steve’s hands.

Natasha caught sight of a Hydra lurking from above and shot him. He fell flat onto to the floor a few feet away.

Steve blew air down Bucky’s airway, and continued pumping them into his lungs. “Breathe, Bucky, please,” he begged.

Bucky looked as good as dead, his hair plastered to his blue, lifeless face. His breathless body was still encrusted in bits of melting ice.

“Please, Buck,” Steve sobbed, “please,” again and again, like a mantra, as he worked on reanimating Bucky’s corpse.

Natasha numbly fired at a Hydra who was about to shoot at Sam. She turned back to look at Bucky, jostling under Steve’s weight pressed onto his chest. Something inside him cracked under Steve’s hands.

Steve didn’t stop. He continued pumping like a machine – relentless; in denial.

And it worked. Bucky crashed back into his own body, gasping deep and gulping air before he was even fully conscious.

“Oh my – oh my God,” Steve breathed. He gathered Bucky’s limp body in his arms, kissing him on the cheek as Bucky rasped and wheezed. Natasha noted that his fingers were still stiff.

She heard a metallic screech. Sam’s wing was blown off. Again.

“Go,” Natasha said.

Steve pressed another kiss into Bucky’s cheek, before rushing to Sam’s aid.

Bucky panted for air, choking on it. His shakes had turned into full-on convulsions from the cold, his wet hair slapping back and forth against his face and neck.

“James? Can you hear me?” Natasha rubbed warmth into his frozen flesh fingers so he wouldn’t lose those, too.

A Hydra got too close, so she got up and twisted his arm so far back it got dislocated before pressing her Widow’s bite into his neck. The same went for the next three, or four. There were many of them – too many, but they had to end at some point. She made sure to never stray farther than three feet away from where Bucky laid.

When the last three were beheaded in one swoop by Steve’s shield, Natasha panted and collapsed onto her knees next to him.

Steve slid the shield behind his back, eyes on Sam.

Sam had his eyes on Steve, too, but his were clouded by betrayal.

“Sam, nothing I can say now will make this better—“

“Were either of you ever going to tell me?”

A tear dripped off Natasha’s chin. “No,” she said.

Sam flinched, like she had physically struck him.

“Sam, I…” Steve said, words faltering. “We’re so sorry.”

Sam’s breath hitched in his chest. “Were you protecting him?” he nudged his chin in Bucky’s direction.

“We were protecting you too.”

“If he died,” Sam said, eyes fixed on Bucky’s trembling form, “would you rather not know whose hands his blood was on?”

“No,” Steve admitted, moving subconsciously towards Bucky, protectively.

“Pierce courted the order,” Sam said, “and he carried it out –”

“Sam, he didn’t know what he was doing,” Natasha said, beseechingly.

“—but he didn’t know what he was doing. I know,” Sam said. “But you both did.”

Natasha opened her mouth but she had no words.

The silence was the last thing that they would share together, so they did. A thin string of web waiting to be cut. Everything else would soon unravel.

Red lights began blinking.

“DANGER,” the operator said.

Steve moaned tiredly.

Natasha jumped to her feet as Steve collected Bucky, whose quivers had died down to tremors. Sam was already walking away, without so much as a backward glance. Natasha detached a grenade from her suit and tucked it into the corner of a wall.

Steve looked at her, but said nothing. He knew she didn’t get it from SHIELD.

She began running, listening to Steve’s footsteps behind her.

They ran into Madame B, standing in the hallway like she did before.

Natasha waved Steve away. Convinced she knew what she was doing, Steve took off after Sam. Natasha looked back at Bucky’s lingering eyes over Steve’s shoulders.

“We have to go,” Natasha urged the woman who raised her.

The woman just stood there.

“You can’t stay here. You’ll die.”

Madame B’s face had no expression, but a tear rolled down her cheek. “Then so I shall,” she said flatly. “I’ve lost everything.”

Natasha tried to dial down the panic she could feel blooming in her chest. “No. No. Come with us.”

Madame B dropped a kiss on the crown of Natasha’s head, stroking her hair. “Go, child. Go.”

Natasha ran.

A swarm of Hydra agents were close behind her. For every batch of them that died, there was a new one waiting in the wings.

Cut off one head, twelve grow in its place.

The sound of a gun firing left her ears ringing. It wasn’t fired in her direction.

Natasha burst into tears, running as fast as she could. She had lost the only mother she had ever known.

She burst into the courtyard, landing hard on her knees, sobs ripping through her. Steve slammed the metal door shut behind her.

“Where’s –“

Natasha shook her head, tears dripping all over the ground. Steve looked at her sympathetically, stepping away from the door.

She hit the detonator.

Everything rumbled between them, the entire academy collapsing into ruins. They weren’t far away from the main location of destruction, but it was enough to make them all go deaf for a second.

Sam was going to need new eardrums.

Once her vision cleared from the debris, she noticed that Steve had had Bucky propped up against a cracked, granite wall. He was awake, lids heavy but eyes bright.

“Hey,” Natasha sobbed, the relief of seeing him alive finally hitting her.

“Hey,” Bucky rasped.

She wrapped her arms around him. He returned with only his metal arm, the blood still hadn’t flowed to the rest of his body yet.

“We’re locked in,” Steve said. It went without saying that Sam’s wings weren’t functional.

Sam was actively avoiding Bucky’s existence, and the rest of theirs, as well. They had trapped themselves into a corner to avoid the onslaught, and now they were…trapped. Sam kicked the wall angrily.

Something shifted from behind the rubble.

Sam twisted to look with a snarl, and fired relentlessly without so much as a blink. He had turned hard. This was what they had done to him.

Steve’s shield sailed through the air again, followed by a few unfamiliar screams. Natasha had to tear herself away from Bucky’s side again, to fight the fight.

It was like the kind of nightmare that restarted itself every time you fell back asleep.

There weren’t as many of them as there had been before, most of them neutralized in the rubble. But it had been a long fucking day.

A Hydra slipped through Natasha’s sight. She only saw him when he collapsed, revealing Bucky with a smoking gun. He was barely standing straight, swaying and stumbling.

Natasha reached out for him and he buckled into her, breathing hard.

“I got you, I got you,” Natasha whispered, one hand in his hair and another on the small of his back. The back of his shirt was soaked. She thought it was just from all the melted ice, except it was sticky and a few degrees warmer than his freezing skin. “James?” She knew what it was without having to look.

He was leaning heavier and heavier against her. She felt the warm substance spreading across her front too, which was pressed up against his torso.

His declining energy brought them both tumbling onto the ground.

Natasha sobbed, holding onto him for dear life.

“Move,” Steve said, swatting away her grief-stricken incompetent hands. He tried to rip through Bucky’s Kevlar, but the material was too tough.

Now that his frozen blood was pumping in his veins again, it circulated within his body and flowed out steadily like a stream. Gouts and gouts of blood. They were losing him.

Steve settled on undressing him as gently as he could, Bucky’s neck and limbs moving pliantly like he was no more than a doll. A huge gash ran blow his navel across his lower abdomen, from one side to the other.

Someone had cut him in half before they stashed him in the tank, where his body was supposed to heal itself.

They had come so far just to loop all the way back to when they found him in the alley that night.

And now they killed him. Hydra. Steve. Natasha. They all killed him.

What the cult said flashed through her mind. Was this what it was? Everything they did to try and save Bucky from getting absorbed into the cult, yet they had all been merely pawns in their fantasy. They had probably hexed him into getting sick, even.

It was never about mind control. It was simply a curse. He was always going to die no matter what. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Bucky smiled with blood-stained teeth. Blood was spurting from the wound – it must have nicked his abdominal aorta. There was no way to stop the bleeding. “Give – give me a minute.”

To Natasha’s horror, he started digging into his own stomach with his metal fingers.

“Bucky…” Steve reached out to still his fingers but thought better of it.

“They put – something in me,” Bucky panted, voice strained.

Natasha didn’t know how she could make this experience less painful if it were her own fingers instead, so she watched him continue poking around his own intestines.

Bucky’s eyes went out of focus for a few seconds, color leeching from his face. His metal hand finally came away with a blood-covered chip. “Get…rid of it,” he breathed before promptly falling limp in Natasha’s lap, breathing hard against her thigh. Blood was still pouring out of his laceration like an open faucet.

Steve slammed his shield into the chip. Twice.

Sam’s feet stepped into Natasha’s view. She looked up him, silhouetted by the bright sunlight behind his head. His face looked pained but cold, hardened.

He got onto his knees and gently tugged Bucky into a position where he could see his injuries better. Duty overriding emotions. Or was it friendship? Loyalty?

Either way, in that moment, Natasha admired and respected Sam so much more than she thought she ever could anyone.

“Do something, Sam,” Steve begged with what was left of his voice.

Bucky’s eyebrows knitted together, sweat beading above them mingling with water from the melted ice. A vein stood out in his forehead.

“His.” Sam swallowed. “His organs –I.”

“I know you can,” Steve insisted.

“Goddamnit, Steve. I’m not a fucking surgeon!” Sam thundered, tears leaking from his eyes. “I _can’t_.” Sam rocked back onto his heels. “His lung hasn’t even healed properly. His system is in shock from being broken out of cryo so suddenly. And he’s sliced _open_.” Like a fish on ice at the supermarket. “I’m not a – I’m not a vengeful person, but I’m no miracle worker either.”

“Sam,” Bucky whispered. His metal arm, the only part of his body that could still move without taking too much of what was left of him, reached blindly for Sam. When Sam didn’t reach back, he let it drop with a dull thud, chest rising and falling too fast. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

Sam didn’t say anything, breathing in harsh pants, angry tears rolling down his face.

Natasha folded over herself, so she was nose to nose with Bucky. “This isn’t how it ends,” she sobbed.

“You talk like we’re immortals, Natalia,” Bucky murmured wearily, voice barely audible. “We’re not. Just weapons.” He wiped her tears away with bloody metal fingers, the only part of him strong enough to move.

Natasha couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t smeared with Bucky’s blood.

“I have to go,” he whispered. “I have to go, Talia.” His eyelids were fighting a battle of their own.

Natasha sobbed, fingers roaming desperately at any part of him she could touch.

“It’s okay, buddy,” Steve said, voice thick. Bucky’s chin trembled, looking into Steve’s eyes. Steve bent over his face and whispered, “It’s okay,” against his forehead. He kept it there for a long time.

When he lifted his head, Bucky was gone. His blue eyes were as bright as ever, but he wasn’t there.

Natasha slid his eyes shut for him with shaking fingers.

“You barely survived him here on Earth, Steve,” Sam said from a few steps away. He had the least connection to Bucky. “And if you somehow survive him again in this coming war, you know what that means.”

Steve didn’t acknowledge Sam’s warnings, head tucked down and a hand grasping his own chest.

Sam got to his feet. “There never was room for two super-soldiers to exist at the same time.”

“Where are you going?” Natasha asked in a trembling voice, trying to see him through her tears.

“I’m done. This was all I had left to give.” Sam started backing away. “Let me know when the war is coming. Whatever else happens till then and now, is not my fight anymore.”

He turned around. Natasha watched him walk away until he disappeared from her line of sight.

Steve stayed still. Natasha refused to let go of the cold corpse in her lap, going even colder in her arms.


	18. Post Credit #1

Losing family was always hard. Much less multiple at once.

The cult never came back, so neither did Sam.

“What if they were all just a bunch of impostors?” Natasha asked, staring out the window through the glass.

“Doesn’t make any sense.”

“Or they believed it. Believed in what they were doing. But they couldn’t bring Bucky back.” She didn’t really feel anything. “Maybe he’s just gone forever this time.”

“If he’s finally at peace, then I’ll take that.” Steve’s voice was empty. Hollow.

“It’s not supposed to end this way.”

“It’s not.”

Natasha caught her own reflection in the glass. “Maybe he’s fighting them back.”

Steve's voice was gravelly. Reluctant. "Then I hope he’s giving them hell.”


	19. Post Credit #2

Men in hoods wandered past him, face shadowed and anonymous.

Someone stepped up in front of him. Eyes sharp, hair snaking out in red curls from under the hood.

“Good morning, soldier,” she said, in a voice that sounded like music.

He opened his mouth. He hadn’t spoken in days. “Ready to comply.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think, and if you caught any Easter eggs! :D
> 
> I appreciate comments so let's talk!


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